


Panta rhei

by tfm



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Past Child Abuse, autistic!Beau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-05-14 06:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19267576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: You can't go home again.Or: A family tragedy brings Beau back to Kamordah, and she struggles to reconcile the past that she remembers with the things that are staring her in the face.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Panta rhei, in Ancient Greek, meaning "everything flows," and is possibly from a quotation of Heraclitus (lol). 
> 
> Or, in a more direct quotation of Heraclitus (still lol) "All entities move and nothing remains still".

Chapter One

 

_Ten Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beauregard Lionett took a deep breath, and opened the window. It had made a sound, she was sure of it, and yet after a few seconds, no-one came bursting through the door.

 

Not that she had expected anyone to come. Mother and Father’s room was on the other side of the house, and they both left the matter of making sure Beau was in bed to the servants. The servants who gave a single cursory check at around nine p.m, before going down to the kitchens to play dice games with the cook.

 

More than once, Beau had stayed awake all night, just to make sure they didn’t come back. Even still, she’d put together a rough dummy made from pillows under the blankets. It was a cool night, and they probably wouldn’t think twice about the figured huddled beneath half a dozen layers. 

 

Because of the weather, though, she’d put on her heaviest boots, and  the coat she’d borrowed from the gardener , neither of which were exactly optimal for sneaking, but it was better than freezing to death. 

 

She wasn’t going to miss this.

 

Even cooped up away from the rest of the world, Beau had heard people talking about the Winter Festival. Talking about the bonfires, and the music, and the food from all across Exandria. She had gone with Father to negotiate the sale of barrels to the inns in town, and noticed the banners going up.

 

Beau had begged her parents to let her go, and for a while she even thought they might consider it. But not. Apparently such things were inappropriate for a young girl, as though she was six instead of fourteen.

 

Even though the festival was in town at this time every year, they had never deemed it worthwhile to bother taking her. She was allowed the dubious honor of attending the Harvest Festival – the only place on Wildemount that celebrated the traditionally Tal’Dorein celebration – but that was only because it was such an important festival for the wineyards.

 

Carefully, she climbed out of the window, and onto the tree branch.

 

It wasn’t the first time she’d snuck out, or even the tenth, or the twentieth. Usually it was only for an hour or so at a time, to sneak down to the town proper, and say hello to Suri, the bartender at the _Cliff’s Keep_. Somehow, she got along with the adults that were not her parents far more than she got along with other people her age.

 

Shivering, Beau walked fast to stay warm. She was lucky it wasn’t snowing; the last thing she needed was for someone in the house to look out the window and see her footprints leading down into the town. Not that she hadn’t almost been caught for stupider reasons. Once, she’d left her expensive, leather gloves in the bar, and Father had been furious. She’d managed to convince him that she had lost them one day out in the wineyard. He’d gotten it into his head, then, that one of the pickers had stolen the gloves, and fired one that he thought looked suspicious.

 

Beau felt bad, but not bad enough to tell the truth.

 

The town was reasonably quiet, as Beau walked into it. Certainly quieter than she would have expected for the Winter Festival.

 

Seeing the complete dearth of people on the streets, Beau decided to change her plans. She ducked into the _Cliff’s Keep_ , knowing that they would, as always, have a roaring fire. She found a table over near the fire, and rubbed her gloved hands together. She didn’t lower her hood. The bar was reasonably full – full enough that Beau wasn’t noticed by anyone except Suri.

 

‘Evening, young miss,’ Suri said, pointedly as she collected the tankards from the next table, but there was a cheeky sort of shine in her Gnomish eyes. She filled a tankard with mulled apple juice, and brought it over to Beau. Suri liked her well enough, but not well enough to get caught selling booze to Alexander Lionett’s teenage daughter.

 

‘Hey Suri. What happened to the Winter Festival?’

 

‘Ah,’ Suri said dismissively. ‘Night before is always pretty boring. Doesn’t kick off proper until tomorrow.’

 

 _Oh_ , Beau thought. She’d come all the way down here in the freezing cold for nothing. Well that sucked. Now, she would have to do the same thing all over again tomorrow. Oh well. It didn’t mean she couldn’t have fun tonight.

 

“Fun” usually meant chatting to the patrons of the bar, finding things out, swapping stories. Beau had absolutely no friends her own age, but she was garnering a reputation as something of an information dealer amongst the slightly more unsavory folk that frequented the _Keep_. Even tonight, there were at least two groups that were – they thought – surreptitiously discussing their next criminal activity.

 

‘If you can pick the lock, Ger, then Mel can get in and find the safe.’ The half-orc behind Beau was talking in what he clearly thought was a whisper. It seemed strange that they would have this conversation in a public place, but then, the denizens of the _Cliff’s Keep_ were always talking about shady shit. There was an unspoken gentleman’s agreement not to get involved in anyone else’s business.

 

Like always, though, Beau couldn’t help herself. She leaned backwards over her chair, towards the half-orc and his group. There were three of them besides the orc; a young, half-elven woman, and a couple of male halflings. ‘You guys talking about Shifty’s place?’ she asked. Shifty was the owner of the local consignment shop, and was about as trustworthy as his name suggested.

 

The half-orc turned, and gave her a death glare. He gave a slight half-take, though, when he saw her, when he realized how old she was.

 

‘You know, he locks the door, but the window’s always open,’ Beau said, casually. She paused. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that. Maybe these were the type of criminals that would kill anyone that interfered in their business. She had climbed through Shifty’s window more than once, just to check things out, and he still didn’t bother to shut it.

 

The half-orc rounded on her, and she shrunk back into herself. ‘Window’ll be open?’ he said. Beau nodded, a little fearfully. He grinned.

 

‘Thanks, kid.’

 

Beau felt a little offended at the term “kid,” but she had to admit, it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. She was five foot nothing, and looked about twelve, rather than fourteen. ‘ Beau,’ she told him.

 

‘Huh?’

 

‘Beau,’ she said, again. ‘It’s my name.’

 

‘Oh.’ He seemed a little bemused at the thought of polite introduction. ‘Lob. Here.’ He passed her a silver flask. ‘Have a drink.’

 

The drink was strong – stronger than any of the sips of wine Beau had snuck from the rejected casks in her family’s basement. She choked on it, and the half-orc laughed. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘We’ll get you used to it soon enough.’

 

Beau couldn’t help but give a hopeful smile at the words, as though his words meant that they would be sticking around, that they might need her help again.

 

‘You from here?’ he asked, as the group’s food arrived. He loaded a plate with meats and vegetables, and pushed it towards Beau.

 

Beau nodded. She supposed, with her skinny build, and ratty clothes, she looked like she lived on the street. She made no attempt to change that assumption. She didn’t think she’d get much street cred for being a rich kid.

 

‘Feel like making a bit of coin ever now and then?’ he asked.

 

Beau grinned. ‘Yeah,’ she said.

...

 

_Present Day_

 

_Zadash_

 

Beau was more than a little cautious, as she made her way through  the streets of Zadash. She certainly hadn’t planned to come back so soon – nor, she thought, had the rest of the Mighty Nein, especially given Caleb’s concerns about the Soltryce Academy.

 

But when Pumat Sol, of all people, came through with a message from the Cobalt Soul, you tended to pay attention. Beau supposed he was the only person that Dairon had been able to find with the  _Sending_ spell, which was strange in and of itself.

 

In any case, they had been in Rosohna at the time, and, sensing the urgency of the message, Beau had asked the Shadowhand if they’d be able to get a Teleportation Circle back to the City of Beasts. It wasn’t ideal to have to go back through the tunnels to Felderwin, but the only Teleportation Circle that Caleb knew was the one in Nicodranis, which was far enough away from Zadash to be just as painful a journey.

 

It had been a long journey, and every day filled Beau with a little bit more anxiety as to why she needed to return. If it had just been to finish her training, Dairon would have sent a letter, wouldn’t have highlighted the urgency of her return.

 

There was still a little tension between Beau and Dairon, after the whole “heroes of the Dynasty” thing. Something in the tone of the message, though, told Beau that whatever the reason for her return, it had nothing to do with the war.

 

So, she came to the Archive, and got a wandering monk to go and find Dairon for her. She didn’t have to wait long; after less than five minutes, a composed looking Dairon came down the hallway.

 

Cognizant of the fact that the last time they had met had been deep in enemy territory, Beau hugged her. The response was a little stiffer than normal, and it was always pretty stiff. Beau pulled back, frowning.

 

There was a strange look on  Dairon’s face that Beau couldn’t quite place. ‘Beauregard,’  they said. ‘I have some bad news.’

 

There was a slight pause.

 

‘Your parents are dead.’

 

‘Oh,’ Beau said. 

 

She processed the news quietly. She was expecting something a little more urgent,  after everything she had been through to get here . This wasn’t bad news, it was just...news.

 

Then, without a further word to Dairon, she left the monastery. It did not even occur to her to ask questions, like “I’m sorry, what did you say?” or “how did they die?”  Didn’t occur to her to say “thank-you for telling me.”  She just...left.

 

Dairon didn’t follow her.

 

Beau went straight to  an unfamiliar tavern , and ordered a very large tankard of ale. She wasn’t sure if this was the sort of thing you were supposed to do when people you weren’t sure if you hated or not turned up dead.

 

For them both to have died at the same time, she supposed it must have either been an accident, or something deliberate. Not natural causes, unless they’d both come down ill at the same time.

 

Not that it mattered.

 

Unless, of course, her brother was sick, too. The brother that she’d never even met, that she knew nothing about save that he had usurped her place in the world.

 

Usurped was the wrong word, she decided. You couldn’t usurp something the other person didn’t want in the first place.  She wasn’t sure what she had wanted from her parents, but it certainly hadn’t been what they had given her.

 

She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to deal with the fact that she would probably have to _do_ something about it. So, she drank. Far more than she usually did, which was still a reasonable amount.

 

The minutes seemed to blur into days, but realistically, based on how heavy her gold pouch still was, she couldn’t have been there for more than a couple of hours.

 

The door swung open, and Fjord and Yasha walked inside. Beau buried her head in her  tankard . She didn’t particularly want to speak to anyone, let alone her friends, but here they were, and Fjord at least probably wouldn’t take no for an answer.

 

‘There you are,’ he said, and to Beau’s surprise, there was relief in his voice. They must have been looking for her. ‘Dairon sent us to come and find you.’ On another day, Beau would have been amused to find out exactly how that sequence of events had come about. Today, she didn’t give a fuck.

 

‘Yeah?’ Beau asked, fully aware that at this point, she was more than a little bit drunk. ‘Did Dairon tell you what she told me two hours ago?’ She wasn’t sure if it was two hours or not, but that sounded like it could be a possibility.

 

‘No,’ Fjord said. That was all he said, and the look on his face told her that he was leaving it up to her whether or not she wanted to say anything more. Beau sighed. She was sure she was going to regret this.

 

‘My parents died,’ she told him. He gave a sharp intake of breath. On Beau’s other side, Yasha put a hand on her shoulder. A faraway voice told Beau that she should be appreciating that rare touch. A touch that she had wanted for so long, but was always so far away.

 

Fjord seemed to take a moment to collect himself. ‘Beau, I am so sorry.’

 

‘Here’s the thing,’ she said, and it was definitely the ale talking now. ‘I don’t know why I’m upset. I _shouldn’t_ be upset.’ She hadn’t even known she _was_ upset until she’d said it. She sniffed through a sob, and wiped away an annoyingly painful tear. ‘I...we didn’t exactly get on.’ Understatement of the fucking year. But if she were to try and rationalize exactly _why_ they didn’t get along, that was where things started to fall apart.

 

Beau’s parents had rarely laid a hand on her, but nor had they openly showed their affections. The strongest emotion she’d ever seen them show in her regard was disdain, or perhaps resignation. 

 

Resignation that they hadn’t been granted the son they were promised. Resignation that she couldn’t even be bothered to try and be the daughter that they were saddled with. So she had been forced to do things she didn’t want to do, like cross-stitch, and book-balancing. She  was barely allowed to even leave the grounds  for things other than business , or to make friends with the other children in town. Not that they would have wanted to be friends with her anyway.  The few times she did leave the grounds , she’d managed to garner a reputation as “that strange girl,” always climbing trees, and playing in the mud.

 

Even that had gotten her into trouble. It seemed that nothing she ever did was what they had wanted her to do. In the end, there was a breaking point, with Beau turning to a life of crime, and her parents having her forcibly abducted by a secret order of knowledge-obsessed monks. It sounded so dramatic when you put it like that. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a “secret” order. And they weren’t “obsessed.” But the rest of it was pretty much true. 

 

‘She asked me to give you this,’ Fjord said, handing Beau a folded piece of parchment. A letter. Beau didn’t want to read it. She didn’t want to go back to Kamordah, didn’t want to reopen something she already thought she’d gotten closure on.

 

Letter still clutched in her hand, she ordered another ale, and a shot of the strongest whiskey that they had. She drunk the ale first, with the practiced action of someone that had been drinking since they were old enough to sneak into the cellar. Any other time, she might have made a comment to Yasha (standing at Fjord’s side silently, with a worried sort of look on her face) about how good she was with her mouth.

 

She slammed the tankard back onto the bar when she was done, and then downed the shot without any preamble. The nausea was starting to rise in her stomach, and it wasn’t just from the alcohol.

 

Beau opened the letter, and began to read.

 

It was written in the thin, carefully practiced hand of Carlson, the family butler. He was more than a butler, of course – he had helped with affairs both business and family – but it irritated him to be called a butler, so Beau made a point of doing it as often as possible.

 

Her parents, she read, had been killed by bandits while traveling to Deastock. What a dumb fucking way to go. It wasn’t even that dangerous a road, if you went around the Bromkiln Hills, which most people did.

 

There was a lot of wank in there about how she needed to come back to Kamordah and...and nothing, just...come back to Kamordah. As if there was anything that she needed to do except…

 

Beau sighed, and pushed the letter back to Fjord. She realized too late that she was giving him an open invitation to read it. Not that there was anything in there that she didn’t want the Mighty Nein to know. It was just Fjord—‘We can head off for Kamordah in the morning,’ he was saying. Beau’s head shot up, and she regretted it almost immediately.

 

_Why the fuck would she want to go to Kamordah_ ? _Why the fuck would_ he  _think she wanted to go back to Kamordah?_

 

‘I don’t—’ she started, before remembering that conversation she’d had with Fjord on the deck of the Ball-Eater all those months ago. The fact that she had a younger brother waiting for her in Kamordah. A younger brother that no longer had parents, or any other family to speak of, save Beau.

 

_Fuck_ .

 

It didn’t matter, she thought. He probably didn’t even know that she existed. Though, given that she’d only been advised of his existence about a year ago, he was probably at the age where he didn’t know much at all.

 

A strange thought struck her, then – why  _hadn’t_ he been with them, on the road to Deastock. Not that Beau was upset he was still alive. It just struck her as a little strange. Were her parents still so distant that they would leave their infant son at home while they traveled?

 

The honest answer was “yes,” but then, she wasn’t exactly an unbiased source. For all she knew, her parents had loved and cherished her son the way they hadn’t done for their daughter.

 

‘Ah, fuck,’ Beau said, to no-one in particular.

 

The next morning, she woke up with a splitting headache. She hadn’t even remembered leaving the bar, she had been that drunk by the end of the night.

 

How she’d made it back to the  _Leaky Tap_ was something of a mystery, at least it was until Beau noticed Yasha snoozing in a chair in the corner of the room. The barbarian must have helped her – maybe even carried her – from the bar, back to their room. She must have had a shitty night’s sleep, sitting up like that.

 

The events of the previous night came crashing back, all of a sudden, followed by the copious amounts of booze that Beau had drunk. She barely managed to roll off the bed and onto her knees before vomiting into the bucket that had been placed there. Someone had clearly anticipated the consequences of her bender  and prepared accordingly.

 

More evidence supporting this theory; there was a large jug of water on the nightstand. Beau didn’t even bother pouring a glass, just took the jug, and gulped it down as though she’d been wandering the desert for weeks.

 

B eau didn’t bother getting back up. She leaned against the side of the bed, and drank until the jug was empty.  That small amount of movement seemed to stir Yasha from her slumber.

 

‘Morning,’ Beau said, wetly, as she burped a little bit of the water up. Yasha blinked a few times, apparently momentarily confused as to where she was. Understanding set in quickly, and Yasha got to her feet slowly.

 

‘How are you feeling?’

 

‘Hungover,’ Beau said.

 

‘And the...’ Yasha hesitated. ‘And the other stuff?’ Beau shrugged. Jury was still out. Jury would probably be out for a long time. At least until...after. After she did the thing she didn’t want to do, and went back to the place she didn’t want to go. Absentmindedly, she rubbed at the scar on the side of her neck, from where her father had thrown a glass bottle at her after discovering that she’d been skimming off the top. That scar had been the last thing he’d ever given her.

 

‘We’ll see,’ Beau said.

 

She took a breath, and stood up.  Her head spun, and her stomach lurched, but everything stay in place. For the moment.

 

It was time to go back to where she never thought she’d have to go again.

 

Time to go back to Kamordah.


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two

 

_Ten Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

True to his word, whenever they were pulling something, Lob threw a few odd jobs Beau’s way. He paid pretty well, too; better, certainly, than her parents paid some of the halflings that picked their grapes.

 

She worked as a look-out, and as an intel-gatherer, and as a small body to get through a tiny window. The last one she hadn’t liked much; it reminded her far too much of the times she’d been locked away in places she couldn’t escape from.

 

She gave them the little tit-bits of information that could only come from someone who lived in the town, the things she had learned from sneaking around after dark, and watching from the treetops.

 

Beau found, soon enough, that she could sometimes sneak out during the day, as well as at night. If her tutor decided she could study on her own for a while, she would pack up her things, and climb out the window, and head into town. More often than not, the bars were largely empty, given that it was the early afternoon, but Beau reveled in her small rebellion.

 

One day, Beau found Lob and Fiera – the half-elven woman – in a far corner table at the _Cliff’s Keep_. Not planning, just drinking. Fiera had her lute out, and was strumming an upbeat sort of tune.

 

‘Hey, kid,’ Fiera greeted Beau, when she slid into the seat opposite them. Beau couldn’t quite help but blush. Fiera was only five or so years older than her, but Beau felt some strange things that she’d never quite felt before.

 

She briefly thought about what Lania, her nanny, kept telling her. “Beauregard, young men will not find your insolence endearing.” Beau almost rolled her eyes. She didn’t even want to begin to deal with the clusterfuck of telling people she didn’t particularly care what young men thought of her. She already got into enough trouble for cutting her hair, and stealing the stable boy’s trousers. It would have been easier for everyone if she’d just been born a boy. Then, the fact that she wasn’t all that interested in men wouldn’t be a problem.

 

She supposed she could be interested in women while still being a woman herself. Even if it got way easier to sneak out, after she started binding her chest and padding her trousers. People didn’t think twice about a scruffy teenage boy wandering the streets. A scruffy teenage girl, though, they started asking questions.

 

‘Cool song,’ Beau said, maybe a little too eagerly. Even still, Fiera grinned. Lob rolled his eyes.

 

‘Don’t get the poor girl’s hopes up, Fi,’ he said. Beau couldn’t help but blush, but neither Lob nor Fiera seemed overly perturbed by her blatant crush. ‘We’re leaving town tomorrow,’ he told Beau, and Beau took a moment to process what he had said.

 

She had known, of course, that they would be leaving eventually. Even the seasonal workers didn’t stay in Kamordah all that long. The picking season was only three or four months out of the year.

 

‘Oh,’ she said.

 

‘You want to come to Hupperdook?’

 

‘I—’ Beau wanted to say yes. She _should_ have said yes. But then she thought about the hiding she would get from her father if she did. For all that he wouldn’t let her do anything she wanted to do, nor would he let her leave without a fight. ‘I can’t. My parents...’

 

Lob was surprised at the answer. ‘You have parents?’ he asked, maybe a little incredulous. ‘Shit, I thought you were an orphan. Well, yeah, fuck. But, hey, I got some buddies that’ll be coming through in a month or so that’ll need a local fixer, if you’re interested.’

 

‘Sure,’ Beau told him, and that single word was one that changed her life entirely.

 

…

 

Zadash to Kamordah wasn’t a particularly long journey. The first time Beau had made it, she’d been tied up in the back of a cart, bumping along the Bromkiln Byway after dark. Now that she thought about it, the fact that the Cobalt Soul had basically abducted her in the dead of night was kind of a worrying one.

 

Like...that wasn’t a thing that happened to normal people. As far as she knew, at least. It seemed like the sort of thing that asking the rest of her friends wouldn’t exactly yield a consistent answer. After all, they weren’t exactly normal people either.

 

The sad thing was, if her parents had simply just offered to send her away to the Archive, she probably would have said yes in a heartbeat. Anything to get away from Kamordah, from her parents. But they had enjoyed exerting their hold over her far too much to agree to that.

 

The town looked almost exactly as Beau remembered it. Small, peaceful, and really, really boring. It wasn’t even that small, she realized. She just remembered it as being small, because in comparison to Zadash, and to Rosohna, and even to Nicodranas, it kind of felt that way.

 

Okay, that was a bit of a lie. Beau had to admit she’d had some fun times in Kamordah, but most of them had happened after she’d snuck out her window in the dead of night. What was boring was having to live your life stuck in the house that you were barely allowed to leave, locked in a bedroom, or stuck in the library, looking up facts about agriculture.

 

Being a wine town, there was a pretty clear delineation between the rich, and the not so rich. The rich were the ones that owned the wineries, and the wineyards, and the breweries, and the shipping companies. The not so rich were the ones that did the actual hard work; the picking of the grapes, and the getting them ready for crushing, and the barrel-making. It was this part of town that was the least sterile – where people were nice to each other, and saw value in things other than what people could do for you. From fourteen, to about twenty, Beau had snuck out of the house at night to spend time with these people, bonding over ale, and suude, and black-market trading.

 

She led the group to the _Cliff’s_ _Keep_ , the closest thing she had in the town to an old haunt. It was looking a little more tired, a little more rundown, but much the same as it did when she’d been here last. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

 

Inside it was almost empty. This early in the morning, the only patron was a gnarled looking half-orc sitting by the fire. Not Lob. Not that she had expected it to be, but not Lob just the same.

 

They went to the bar to get drinks. There was an unfamiliar dwarven man behind it, that gave a surly sort of grunt when they placed their order.

 

‘There was a gnome that used to work here,’ Beau said. ‘Suri – she still around?’

 

The dwarf grunted again, this time in the negative. ‘Suri died a couple of years back. Bad heart.’

 

‘Oh,’ Beau said, and her stomach dropped. She had liked Suri, who had always been kind to her, who hadn’t cared that she was the child of the stuffy, stuck-up Lionett family the same way everyone else seemed to. ‘Who’re you?’

 

The dwarf laughed at her brusqueness. ‘My name’s Narfuk,’ he said, and, before Beau could say anything, added, ‘Yeah, most people just call me Narf.’

 

‘Right,’ Beau said. ‘Nice to meet you, Narf,’ she said. ‘My name’s Beau.’ Beau wasn’t quite sure whether she saw a flash of recognition in his eyes at the name, but when he poured her beer, he let the head settle, and filled it to the top.

 

For some reason, this made Beau kind of angry. She didn’t want people to be feeling sympathy for her, to treat her differently just because a couple of people that had the same blood as her had gotten themselves killed. Even though she had barely known the Mighty Nein a year, they were already more family than her actual parents had ever been.

 

‘You looked like you wanted to give that dwarf a black eye,’ Fjord commented, when Beau finally sat down with the rest of the group.

 

‘I said “nice to meet you,”’ Beau protested. It had been so long since her last “manners” lesson with Fjord. She thought she was getting better at this sort of thing. At saying what she meant, and having people think she was being sincere.

 

‘Yeah, you said it with a resting bitch face,’ Fjord countered.

 

‘That’s just my face!’ Beau snapped back, and to her surprise, Fjord dropped the subject immediately. Okay, maybe she was being a little bit of a bitch today, but fuck, she was entitled to it.

 

They drank in silence for a long while, before Caleb broke it.

 

‘So,’ Caleb said. ‘Elephant in the room, _ja_. Beauregard, I get the impression that you do not really want to be here.’

 

Beau could have punched him. Though, she considered, one punch would probably knock him straight out.

 

‘I mean, hey,’ she said. ‘My shitty parents are dead. But at least I didn’t kill them, so that’s one point in my favor.’

 

There was a terrible, awkward silence, during which the entire party looked appropriately horrified by her words, and Beau realized what she had said. ‘Fuck, Caleb. I’m sorry, that was...that was a fucking stupid thing to say.’

 

‘ _Ja_ ,’ he agreed.

 

‘It might be better,’ she said, slowly. ‘For me to go up to the house and get the lay of the land. If you guys don’t mind sticking around in town for a couple of days.’

 

‘Sure,’ Jester agreed. She looked like she was about to say something more, but Fjord gave her an almost imperceptible shake of the head. They were treating her with kid gloves, which she somehow both appreciated and resented.

 

This was all so godsdamned stupid. Beau hated who she was when she was in this place. She’d spent so long trying to fix the damage that her parents had done to her, only for it all to come unraveling the moment she set foot in Kamordah.

 

The relationship that Beau had had with her parents was...complicated. Even though she’d long since come to terms with the fact that she would never see them again, part of her still had trouble thinking of them in the past tense.

 

Maybe because deep down, part of her thought that maybe one day they would reach out to her, apologize for all the pain they had caused. Now, there was no chance of that happening. The best she could hope for was a handwritten note, telling her that they were wrong, that she hadn’t been a fuck-up, or a disappointment, and that sending her away had been a mistake.

 

She wasn’t sorry that they had, admittedly. After all, getting sent away was what had led her to the Mighty Nein, to the closest people since Tori that she would be comfortable calling her friends. Even Tori...that had been less of a friendship, and more of a….courtship? Relationship? Beau wasn’t sure if you were supposed to plan illicit drug deals in normal relationships. Of course, they’d done a lot of things that you weren’t supposed to do in relationships.

 

It was the closest thing she had ever felt to love. Or at least, what she thought love was supposed to feel like. She wasn’t entirely sure.

 

She certainly didn’t think she’d loved her parents. Hadn’t loved any of the other family members she had floating around out there. Hadn’t loved Carlson, or any of the maids or the butlers. Then, of course, there was the “after Kamordah” part of her life. Dairon and the Mighty Nein – well there was certainly a platonic love there, maybe even a familial love. She kind of thought that maybe she loved Yasha a little (not that the other woman would ever reciprocate) but she wasn't sure if that was love, or lust. 

 

So yeah. Tori had been the first person in Beau’s life she’d ever really loved. Maybe. Where Tori was now, Beau had no idea. She didn’t really want to know. More because she was afraid of the other woman’s reaction, than anything else.

 

Punching Beau in the face was probably the least of what she would do.

 

Beau left the Mighty Nein at the _Cliff’s_ _Keep_ , and made the painstaking journey to the Lionett family estate.

 

It was not quite _in_ town, given that the majority of the grounds were taken up by the wineyards and the winery proper. From the _Cliff’s Keep_ , it was about a half hour walk, if you were meandering, which Beau absolutely was.

 

When she finally made it to the front door, it was wide open, and a dark-suited elven figure was standing there.

 

‘Carlson,’ Beau greeted the butler. He ushered her inside, and shut the door. She set her bag down on the ground, and bit her lip.

 

She didn’t want to be here.

 

‘Miss Beauregard, so wonderful to see you. Leland called ahead that he saw you coming up the road.’ He didn’t sound sarcastic, but then, he never did. Their relationship had always been something of a contentious one. ‘If only the circumstances were different.’

 

‘I—’ Beau started. Then stopped. She didn’t think it would be particularly smart for her to say that she was glad they were dead. Not that she was glad. Just...indifferent.

 

At least, that was what she told herself.

 

‘You seem to be doing well with the Cobalt Soul,’ Carlson continued. ‘Much more...put together than last I saw you.’ Ah, there was the dickbag she remembered. Not that he was wrong, though. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been bleeding from a half dozen places as she was dragged away by monks. Not the most auspicious of exits. Of course, even now, she was wearing vestments that had been mended and re-mended by Jester a dozen or so times, that had been soaked in blood so often they were kind of a purplish color, more than the blue they were supposed to be.

 

‘Well, time isn’t kind to everyone,’ she said, looking at him, pointedly. ‘So I guess I have to make the most of what I have.’

 

‘I have missed our little chats,’ Carlson sniffed, in a faux refined sort of way. ‘Shall I have Frederick brought down to see you?’ Beau frowned. _Who the fuck was Frederick_? Then, from context, it clicked into place.

 

It was the first time she had ever heard her brother’s name.

 

Frederick. Frederick Lionett.

 

It had a nice ring to it.

 

‘Ah, sure,’ she said. Then. ‘Is he...’ She wasn’t sure what she wanted to ask. _Is he like them?_ was the likely one. The other one, the one she really didn’t want to know the answer to was, _is he like me?_ Is he a weird sort of loner, desperate for any scrap of approval? Does he take people far too seriously, or not seriously enough? That childhood, she didn’t wish on anyone.

 

‘He’s...quiet,’ Carlson said. The tone of his voice troubled Beau, as if he’d had to think about before coming up with a delicate answer. ‘Much quieter than one would expect, for four years old.’

 

Beau froze. Four years old. That meant that her parents had waited three years before even bothering to inform her of his existence. It was as much as she should have expected. They had never bothered telling her anything of importance while she had lived here. Good riddance, they must have thought, after they’d finally shipped her off.

 

For all that, though, she would have expected there to be less of a sign that she had ever lived in the place. The piano in the parlor, she saw, as they walked through the house, still bore the deep gouge of when she had accidentally on purpose got into a wooden sword fight with the maid’s son.

 

The maid had been fired, and Beau had been grounded (as if she’d ever been allowed to leave the grounds anyway), but for some reason, they never fixed the piano. In hindsight, she felt kind of shitty for getting the maid fired. And, she supposed, for gouging the piano. It had been her great-grandfather’s piano, after all. At least that was what her father had told her as he whipped her senseless.

 

He didn’t hit her often, but when he did, it had made a mark.

 

Carlson stopped in the second parlor, the one that her parents had always used for important business meetings. There was no piano in here, but there was a cabinet filled with the finest wines from across Exandria.

 

Beau hesitated before sitting down on the fine leather sofa that she’d always been banned from even looking at. She waited, teeth clenched.

 

Ten minutes later, she looked up, and saw two figures enter the parlor.

 

The boy holding his nanny’s hand was small – certainly smaller than any four-year-old Beau had ever seen, though, admittedly, her knowledge of children wasn’t the greatest. He was wearing a sweater-vest that sort of reminded her of Caleb, even though, to her knowledge, Caleb had never worn a sweater-vest in his life. His arms were clutched around a thick, blue book.

 

Beau knelt down. It seemed like the right thing to do – get down on his level. ‘Do you know who this is, Frederick?’ the nanny said.

 

Frederick gave a tiny sort of nod. Beau was surprised. Or maybe he hadn’t understood the question.

 

He said something, so soft that Beau almost missed it. Her name.

 

‘That’s right,’ the nanny continued, warmly. ‘This is your big sister, Beauregard. And do we remember where Beau has been?’

 

Beau didn’t quite catch the word he said next, but the nanny seemed pleased with the answer, anyway.

 

‘That’s right – she’s been at the library.’ As an aside, she added to Beau, ‘He couldn’t quite manage monastery.’

 

‘I’ve been reading lots of books,’ Beau told him. She wasn’t sure what was appropriate for a four-year-old, but she didn’t think that “also I can punch really well” was the way to go. ‘Do you, uh...do you like reading?’ she asked.

 

Frederick nodded.

 

‘He’s a very big fan of adventure stories.’

 

‘I’ve got lots of those I can tell him,’ Beau assured her. She looked down, and realized that there were a few errant bloodstains on her vestments. Some of those stories might be a little too violent for a four-year-old, she decided. Not just any four-year-old, she reminded herself. Her _brother._

 

He looked a fair bit like her, too. The same medium brown skin, the same bright blue eyes. His hair even curled the same way hers did when she cut it really short. A quiet, inquisitive young kid that didn’t quite know how to interact with the world.

 

That wasn’t familiar at all.

 

At least, she thought to herself, her parents weren’t around to fuck him up the same way they had fucked up her.


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Three, aka Beau and Yasha are both bad at people

 

Chapter Three

_Kamordah_

 

_Eight Years Ago_

 

The first time Beau got arrested, she was sixteen years old, and she was surprised that it had taken so long.

 

She’d been working with a new crew, a different crew who were in Kamordah for the first time. Lob had told her they were trustworthy, but that didn’t explain how she was somehow the one that ended up with cuffs on her wrists after the dust settled.

 

Sitting in a dark cell for hours on end, waiting for her father to show up certainly wasn’t how she had planned to spend her afternoon.

 

In the end, her father never came. The guards let her loose after sweating her out for almost a day and a half, trying to get her to squeal on her co-conspirators. She didn’t, and they let her go anyway.

 

They must have realized that a skinny little weakling like her wasn’t going to be the mastermind of an intricate plot. At least, that was what she’d assumed. Later, she learned that Suri had gone to the Crownsguard, and done the squealing for her. 

 

The worst – or maybe the best – part of all of it, was that when she trudged home, covered in bruises, exhausted, and starving, her parents had barely even noticed that she’d gone.

 

Carlson, of course, had noticed, and so had Lania, but neither thought it important to rat her out, for which she was grateful. Instead, Carlson arranged for the cook to prepare her a meal. Beau suspected that he may have been in touch with Suri. It would have been weird to say thank-you, right?

 

‘Your parents are on their way to Rexxentrum,’ he told her. ‘Negotiating a deal with the Empire.’ Beau might have raised an eyebrow at that, but she was too used to her father trying to kiss the Empire’s ass to really give a shit.

 

‘When did they leave?’

 

‘This morning,’ he told her. Which meant that they’d either realized she was gone, and didn’t care, or they hadn’t bothered to think of saying goodbye. Either option was equally likely. Beau said nothing, and went back to her meat and cheese and vegetables.

 

Either way, it was a good thing that they were gone. She could be a little less sneaky with the whole “sneaking out” thing.

 

The next night, she’d tidied herself up a bit, but hadn’t quite managed to cover up the bruises that marred her face. Still, bruises were one of those things that a lot of the wayward travelers coming through Kamordah seemed to have.

 

It still amused her that anyone would _bother_ to travel to Kamordah. Surrounded on almost three sides by mountains, it wasn’t exactly on the way to anywhere. The only reason people seemed to come was to visit the wineries, or to steal from the wineries. Not to mention the fact that there was a semi-burgeoning drug trade.

 

The last time she’d been in town, Fiera had given Beau a small pouch of suude. It had given her a massive rush to the head, and knocked her out almost immediately. Her fingers had tingled for hours afterward.

 

The _Cliff’s Keep_ was booming, for a Grissen evening, and Beau had to push through a group of raucous dwarves to get to the bar. Suri was busy pouring a drink for a black-haired human girl in traveling clothes. She couldn’t have been much older than Beau; maybe eighteen or nineteen. Her eyes looked tired, and she seemed glad to have found lodging for the evening.

 

The girl – woman, really – looked over at Beau with dark, curious eyes. Beau gave a nervous sort of smile.

 

‘Make it two,’ the woman said. Beau raised half an eyebrow.

 

After two years of haunting the bar, she’d had just about managed to sweet talk Suri into giving her the weakest ale that they had. The woman set down a tankard of very dark ale in front of Beau. Beau wasn’t as familiar with ale as she was with wine, but she knew that the darker beers were stronger.

 

‘What’s your name?’ the woman said. Her voice sounded nice. A little stunned that anyone that hadn’t already heard of her by reputation, that didn’t seem to be in town for anything nefarious, all logic and reason left Beau’s mind.

 

‘Beau,’ she said. She took a sip of the ale and almost choked. It was _really_ strong.

 

‘Nice to meet you Beau.’ The other woman grinned. ‘My name’s Tori.’

 

...

 

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

The tavern seemed a little emptier without Beau there.

 

Yasha hadn’t realized, until she was gone, just how much she had come to depend on the other woman’s dependable presence. Less dependable, over the past few days, admittedly, during which she had gotten caught in long, dark moods, and wandered ahead of the group for hours at a time.

 

It was understandable, they decided. Everyone reacted to grief differently. Though she still had gaps in her memory, that was one thing Yasha  _did_ remember about Zualla’s death. The anger, and the pain, and the agony.

 

‘Okay,’ Fjord said, in a hushed sort of whisper, even though they were the only ones in the room. ‘Real talk. Exactly how much has Beau told all of yous about her life here? ‘Cos I get the impression there’s some stuff she ain’t telling us.’

 

Nott, strangely, seemed to be the one that knew the most, though the goblin glossed over a lot of it. Yasha knew a little bit – she suspected that she was the only one Beau had told about Tori, about the girl she had loved, and it seemed rude to share that information with the rest of the group.

 

‘It’s funny,’ Fjord was saying. ‘I dunno about you guys, but I can never tell if she’s telling the truth about some of this stuff or not.’

 

The conversation sort of fizzled from there. They didn’t have much to do while Beau did whatever she needed to do up at the house. It struck Yasha as a little strange that she didn’t want them there, that she had told them to stay in town while she sorted things out.

 

Yasha wasn’t particularly inclined to be staying indoors while they waited, so she strapped her sword to her back, and went for a walk. The rest of the group were apparently so used to her wandering off now, that they said nothing.

 

In the distance, she saw the beginnings of a storm.

 

…

 

Beau paced.

 

She hated being in this house.

 

Being in this house made her feel small, and it made her feel weak. She’d always been kind of small; a weedy, nuggety sort of kid that probably would have been made fun of at school, if she’d ever been to school. As an adult, she was shorter than every other member of the party, save Nott. Even Jester was a couple of inches taller, and a lot stronger, and showed no qualms in manhandling Beau when necessary. 

 

At the Cobalt Soul, being relatively small had been an advantage. The lower body-weight made it easier to do pull-ups, easier to dodge blows, easier to run up walls.

 

If she’d been a boy – if she’d been  _born_ a boy – she supposed she would have been allowed to all the things she’d wanted to do that were considered appropriate, like learn to fence, and to run the business properly, and...y’know,  _leave_ the house for something other than work.

 

“It’s much too dangerous out there, Beauregard,” her mother would say, when Beau asked if she could go play in the woods. Beau was darkly amused by the thought that her mother had been proved right, albeit almost fifteen years later. The most she’d been allowed to do was go for a walk in the orchard, and risk a shouting match if she got her dress dirty. Later, when she learned to sneak out, she would wash her clothes by hand. Not that anyone ever paid enough attention to find out.

 

Thinking back, it seemed so arbitrary, the things she was allowed to do, and the things that she wasn’t. Was allowed to help out in the wineyard, but wasn’t allowed to go and climb trees, was allowed to learn how to keep the books, but wasn’t allowed how to learn fencing. It seemed to Beau that they were willing to bend their own stupid rules when it was necessary for the business, but not when it was necessary for her own happiness.

 

She knew, of course, that they never intended her to actually  _run_ the business. For years after her birth, they kept trying, and trying, and trying to have another child. By the time she was eleven, Beau was old enough to understand the frequent doctors’ visits, and the red-rimmed eyes of her mother at random times, after abject joy on the previous days.

 

They must have been so pleased when their son was finally born, to the point that any love they felt for her had vanished entirely.

 

Still, Beau couldn’t exactly blame them. Frederick was a pretty cute kid, in spite of his silence. Carlson definitely hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said that the boy was quiet. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the words, he just didn’t particularly want to say them. Beau could definitely relate to that.

 

She herself alternated between periods of silence, and periods of never shutting the fuck up. Usually, the periods of “not shutting the fuck up” coincided with the times that she really should be shutting the fuck up.

 

Beau decided to go for a walk.

 

She wasn’t ready to bring her friends here yet. Bringing them here would open up a whole slew of doors that she didn’t quite want them to walk through. Opening those doors would mean answering the very questions she’d spent the last year or so of her life trying to avoid answering.

 

As she had so often done on lazy afternoons growing up, Beau wandered across the hills that over looked the winery. For all that she hated Kamordah, hated the house, hated her parents, it quite a pretty town for most of the year. There hadn’t been any snow yet, but there was a pleasant bit to the air that Beau relished. Off over the Cyrios Mountains, dark clouds were gathering.

 

As if waiting for the storm, Beau thought she saw a familiar figure in the distance. She was a little surprised at first, but then decided she shouldn’t be. After all, she couldn’t expect the Mighty Nein to hang around Kamordah doing nothing while she got her shit together.

 

Yasha was sitting at the top of the hill, watching the lightning rumble in the distance. The storm was a good way away, and didn’t seem like it was coming towards Kamordah.

 

‘It seems late in the year for storms,’ Yasha said, as Beau sat down beside her. She seemed distracted.

 

‘Oh yeah, Kamordah gets lots of winter storms,’ Beau replied, in an offhand sort of voice. She edged in as close as she dared to Yasha.

 

‘It seems nice,’ Yasha said. Beau didn’t realize that her fist clenched, at this, until she felt her fingernails bite into her palm.

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau said. ‘It _seems_ nice,’ she said. Though, objectively, she could sort of understand that an outsider, that had grown up in a swamp where nothing grew, might find the rolling hills, emerald green even in winter, and the stunning vistas of mountains and forests a beautiful sight.

 

A ll the beauty of Kamordah, though, was nothing compared to the abject awe that crossed Yasha’s face as she looked out over those rolling hills.

 

Caught up in the moment of it all, Beau leaned over and pressed a kiss to Yasha’s cheek.

 

‘Beau.’ Yasha Pulled away. Beau felt a red-hot surge of embarrassment color her cheeks. She had thought...Well, whatever she had thought, she was clearly wrong. ‘I don’t—you’re busy grieving, we shouldn’t...’

 

‘I’m not grieving,’ Beau retorted. ‘You have to care about someone to grieve them. You should know that more than anyone.’

 

‘Yes, I should,’ Yasha said, but she didn’t sound offended, or hurt by the words. Beau wasn’t sure whether she’d _wanted_ the words to hurt or not. ‘I also know that sometimes when we grieve, we say things we don’t mean to say.’

 

‘Sorry,’ Beau muttered. It was something she found herself saying a lot, lately. Sorry that she had been acting like a bitch, sorry that she had so badly misinterpreted Yasha’s signals.

 

It wasn’t, after all, as though her attraction was a recent thing. She had been lusting – pining? – after Yasha since the day that they’d met, and for a long time, it had seemed like an impossibility. Especially after learning that Yasha had been married.

 

There was a long, awkward silence between them, which Yasha finally broke. ‘Maybe while you’re here, you could track down your old friend – Tori.’

 

Beau felt a sudden wave of nausea at the suggestion. She couldn’t deny that she had considered it. Coming from Yasha, though, the suggestion felt like a brush-off. A way of telling her to move on and find a better option.

 

She would have fucked Yasha right there on the hilltop, if the other woman had let her. Which, okay, yeah, maybe that was coming from a place of grief. She wasn’t sure why she always responded to grief with sex; after Mollymauk, after defeating the Iron Shepherds. Somehow, death and sex were intrinsically linked in her head, and that wasn’t fucking weird at all.

 

Without any further word, Beau stood, and wandered away. It was clear that Yasha didn’t really want to talk. Or maybe it was her that didn’t want to talk, and Yasha was just being her normal, silent self.

 

Regardless, talking wasn’t a thing that was going to happen any time soon. Beau was reminded, darkly, of those first few awkward conversations that they’d had on watch. Every time she thought things were getting less weird between them, it took a jump backwards.

 

Beau wandered vaguely northward, until she reached the peak of the last hill before they became mountains. It was still reasonably high – high enough that by the time she reached the top. She was sweating.

 

From here, she could see out over the hundreds of acres that made up the Lionett Winery. In this weather, the vines were dormant, and looked like thousands and thousands of rows of skeletal bramble. When the weather started to warm, vines would spring from the trunk anew.

 

Like most people in Kamordah, there had been frequent, if secret prayers to the Wildmother, to ensure good harvest. Outwardly, the shrines were to Pelor, the Dawnfather, to whom there was a large temple in town.  Though she herself kept a quiet vigil to the Knowing Mistress, Beau had never seen the point in praying for things the gods had no control over. Not that any celestial being would ever deign to listen to her anyway.

 

She wasn’t entirely sure who she was talking to, then, when she started screaming at the sky. ‘Why couldn’t you have been happy with what you got?!’ Whether or not they were up there, she didn’t know, and frankly, didn’t particularly care. 

 

She’d just needed to say it.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four

 

_Eight Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beau didn’t think it was a stretch to say that she was in love.

 

She’d known Tori for all of six minutes, but, to be honest, Beau would have been ready to declare her feelings right after that first sip of beer.

 

Okay, so maybe smitten was the better word.

 

‘So where’re you from?’ Beau asked, in what she hoped was a casual sort of voice.

 

‘Oh, you know, here and there.’

 

‘Cool,’ Beau nodded.

 

‘What about you?’

 

Beau paused. For some reason, she didn’t want to admit she was from Kamordah. It didn’t sound cool, or exotic, or adventurous. But, if she _didn’t_ say she was from Kamordah, and then things...well, she wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but she didn’t want to get caught in a lie.

 

‘I’m from here,’ she said, waving her hand around. Then, thinking Tori might interpret that as being from _Cliff’s Keep_ , added, ‘From Kamordah.’

 

‘Nice,’ Tori said, and Beau couldn’t quite tell whether she meant it or not. It was usually at this point in the conversation where people asked Beau if she was the local fixer, and what she could tell them about whatever job they’d come to pull. ‘You come here often?’

 

‘Most nights,’ Beau said. ‘When I can sneak out.’

 

‘Sneak out?’ Tori raised an eyebrow. ‘What’re you, seventeen?’

 

‘I—sixteen,’ Beau admitted. She felt a fresh wave of embarrassment at having to admit it. ‘My parents are...kinda assholes.’

 

‘Ah,’ Tori grinned. ‘I am very much familiar with the asshole parents, thing. That was why I left home. Packed a bag and ran away in the middle of the night.’

 

‘Wish I could do that,’ Beau muttered. She wanted to do that. She should do that.

 

But, admittedly, she had a pretty good gig going in Kamordah. At least outside of the house. She had about thirty gold stashed away in the same place she kept the wine that she’d filched from the cellar. One day, she’d have enough to get out of this place, and go to Rexxentrum, or Zadash, or Vasselheim. Somewhere there were so many people, her parents would never be able to find her.

 

‘Why don’t you?’

 

Beau shrugged. ‘Gotta pull a few more jobs, first. Get enough coin that I’ll never have to come back.’

 

‘I’ll drink to that,’ Tori said. Her smile was really pretty, Beau thought. Though her cheekbones were high, and refined, her cheeks sunk into tiny dimples when she grinned. ‘You pull jobs in town?’ she asked, casually.

 

‘Eh, not on my own,’ Beau said. ‘Just work for whoever needs help. Like a contracter. You looking to hire?’

 

‘Not quite,’ Tori told her. Her eyes were bright, as though she was really excited about what she was talking about. ‘I’m looking for a partner.’

 

…

 

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beau’s bedroom was exactly the same as she had left it; it seemed eerily undisturbed, as though it were a museum exhibit of the last days of her childhood. For some reason, even the thick layer of dust that she’d expected was absent. Apparently, it was still considered important enough to put on the cleaning rota.

 

The thought gave her a strange feeling that she couldn’t quite place. The same feeling she’d gotten from seeing her brother so aware of who she was, of seeing the pictures of her that still hang on the walls. Like they couldn’t have been bothered to be nice to her while she was there, and it was so easy for them to do when she wasn’t there.

 

 _Absence makes the heart grow fonder_ , Caduceus would say. _That’s bullshit_ , Beau was sure she would counter. Her not being there certainly wouldn’t have made them love her more, when there was hardly any love there in the first place.

 

Her absence probably made it easier for them to pretend that they loved her, since she wasn’t exactly there to refute it. “Oh yes, our young Beauregard. She’s off studying at the monastery. We’re so proud.” Beau snorted. Even her imagination, it sounded wrong. Not once in their lives had her parents told her – or even intimated to her – that they were proud.

 

Clothes that no longer fit were folded neatly in the dresser. Some of them looked like they were moth-eaten, and Beau made a mental note to throw them away later. Or just leave them for Carlson to deal with. Whichever option seemed like it would work best.

 

Even the secret cubby she had in the back of her wardrobe had been untouched. That, at least, was still covered in dust.

 

Since there had been no-one there to get rid of them, there were still a half dozen bottles of Lionett wine hidden there, in addition to a small leather pouch with a hundred or so gold pieces. Hardly anything, compared to the couple of thousand or so she had at the moment.

 

Of the bottles she’d stolen, she’d never taken any of the _really_ good stuff. Beau knew she would have been found out a lot sooner if she’d been taking that. Enough, though, that she could take the edge off of the ever-present anxiety that she’d felt ever since setting foot in this godsdamned house. As though every corner she turned, someone would throw something at her, or scream at her, or, worst of all, outright ignore her.

 

If they hit her, or screamed at her, or any of that stuff, they were at least acknowledging her existence.

 

Beau took a bottle from the cubby, and wiped the dust clean. Wine kept pretty well, so it probably wouldn’t kill her. She took a long, healthy swig of the stuff, and almost choked. You had to sip wine, if you wanted to appreciate the taste.

 

Beau didn’t particularly care about the taste.

 

She didn’t particularly feel like sleeping in this room. The whole godsdamned house was filled with their ghostly presence, with the memory of the things that had happened here. In the end, she set up her bedroll on the floor. If she had to stay there, then at the very least, she could feel like she was on the road to Hupperdook, or something like that.

 

Even still, the night was plagued with the sort of dreams she hadn’t had since the last time she’d spent a night in this house; almost five years ago, now. It still surprised her realizing just how long she’d spent at the Cobalt Soul, and how little she had to show for it, until she’d met Dairon.

 

The next morning, she woke with a crick in her neck, and exhaustion washing over her. Ugh. Maybe she would just have to suck it up and sleep in the bed. Five years was long enough that things should feel different.

 

... _right?_

 

Ugh.

 

Not entirely satisfied, Beau went downstairs to deal with all the things that she’d put off dealing with the previous day.

 

Carlson had been kind enough to arrange for breakfast. Bacon and eggs and toast, which Beau wolfed down as though she hadn’t seen food in months. She’d gone without meals often enough in this place for it to be an engrained response.

 

While Beau ate, Carlson spoke.

 

‘Knowing that you have, of course, been in a monastery...’ he said, and Beau knew immediately that he absolutely did not believe she’d been with the Cobalt Soul this whole time. ‘I took the liberty of having some clothes made. For the funeral.’ He handed her a neatly wrapped package in plain brown paper. Beau could feel the softness of the clothes underneath. Then, she processed the last word of his proclamation.

 

Right, the funeral. The funeral that, as the eldest surviving child, she was technically probably supposed to prepare. How the fuck were you supposed to plan a funeral?

 

There was a cemetery in town, of course, and a graveyard by the church, but Beau vaguely recalled something about a family plot. That seemed like something Caduceus could help her with.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

This was so fucking stupid. She didn’t know why she’d even come back to Kamordah. She didn’t know why she didn’t just leave now.

 

Okay, the second one she had a pretty good answer for. Now that she’d met her baby brother, she couldn’t just leave him behind. That was something that shitty people did, and Beau was trying really fucking hard not to be a shitty person.

 

‘Do I have to…’ she started, wondering if there was a delicate way she could phrase the question.

 

‘I have also taken the liberty of calling for the undertakers,’ he told her. ‘To arrange the burial.’

 

‘Sure,’ Beau agreed. ‘Thanks.’

 

‘They will be here this afternoon.’

 

‘Uh huh,’ Beau said, thinking _fuck_. Then, she remembered the other question she’d wanted to ask.

 

‘Hey Carlson,’ Beau said. ‘Do we have enough rooms for a few extra guests?’

 

‘Of course,’ Carlson told her. ‘There are the guest rooms, and, if you choose to use it, the master bedroom...’ He trailed off in an expectant sort of way.

 

Beau tried to speak, but choked on her words. She cleared her throat. ‘The master bedroom? _Their_ room?’ It made sense, of course, to clear out the master bedroom for other uses, but she wasn’t quite there yet. In any case, that would be a problem for…

 

For someone else, surely. Surely her parents didn’t want her to have anything to do with any of this. There must have been a directive somewhere that someone had missed, making sure that she was not to be invited to the funeral in the event of their deaths.

 

Surely, though, if that had been the case, Carlson would have said something. Somehow, the fact that he expected her return was worse than the possibility of her being banned from the Estate. That, she could have dealt with. This….this was disconcerting. This had to be part of some cruel joke they were playing on her; forcing her to come back, and deal with their bullshit one last time.

 

Being welcomed back with comparatively open arms, as though nothing had happened. It was an unfamiliar feeling. She had been kicked out of so many places in her life, it had just become second nature.

 

‘Of course,’ Carlson said, frowning. ‘I understand it might make you uncomfortable to use it, however. How many guests are you expecting?’

 

Beau did the maths. ‘Six,’ she told him. ‘But they can bunk two to a room.’

 

‘Certainly,’ he agreed. ‘There will be a number of guests coming from out of town for the funeral that would be likely to inhabit the other guest rooms.’

 

‘Sure,’ Beau said, meanwhile, thinking, _fuck._ It was bad enough dealing with her parents and their metaphorical ghosts. The last thing she wanted was to deal with their friends, too. Their friends that had always talked down on Beau, that had never discouraged the disdain or the laughter, or any of that bullshit.

 

At least she’d have her own friends to give her some kind of backup.

 

Beau took the package upstairs to her room, and opened it.

 

It wasn’t a dress, that was the first thing that struck Beau as interesting. Carlson, being the one to oversee the maids, who did the laundry, was obviously keenly aware of her tastes in clothing.

 

The suit was finely cut, in a dark blue material that complemented her Cobalt Soul garb. It was a little tight in parts; Beau had definitely had a lot less muscle when she’d been here last. Still, it looked pretty good, all things considered, and, though Beau hated to admit it, it was pretty nice of Carlson to have done that for her.

 

Though they had rubbed each other the wrong way at times, he had always treated her far better than _they_ had. Saw her insolence as a source of amusement, rather than of disrespect. Beau vaguely recalled a few times that he had been disinclined to report some of her more unsavory activities to her parents. At the time, Beau had thought it was for his own protection.

 

Now, Beau realized that it had probably been for hers.

 

…

 

Beau found her friends in one of the middle-of-the-road inns. There were quite a few inns in town, most of which were run by halflings. It was in these inns that Beau had first made inroads (hah!) in her tragically short criminal career.

 

She carefully avoided Yasha’s gaze. From the reactions of the rest of the group, the aasimar hadn’t told them about what had happened on the hilltop. Even now, almost twenty-four hours later, she got embarrassed thinking about it. How could she ever have imagined that someone like Yasha – cool, calm, amazing fucking Yasha – would ever feel that way about someone like...someone like her.

 

Someone that put their foot in almost every conversation they had, someone that couldn’t stop digging even if the shovel got taken away, someone that decided it was a great idea to go for a kiss even when there was no fucking way…

 

Ugh.

 

‘So, we may be staying here a few days,’ she told them. They didn’t look surprised. Beau wasn’t sure why she thought this would be something that she could have just dipped into and then left without a second thought, the way she did most things in life. She had thought that there would somehow be someone else left to do the things that she was supposed to do.

 

Fuck, they hadn’t even done a proper job of disowning her.

 

‘But, good news, Carlson thinks we’ve got room for you in the house.’

 

‘Who’s _Carlson_?’ Jester asked, letting the name roll off her tongue. Beau felt a flush of embarrassment rise to her cheeks.

 

‘Butler,’ she muttered.

 

‘You have a _butler_?’ Nott said, in a screechy sort of voice. ‘Just how rich _is_ your family?’

 

‘Eh,’ Beau said, waving a hand slightly. It would not mollify them for long, she knew, and the moment they saw the house, she would be outed to her friends as a spoiled little rich kid that ran way from home. It was sort of the truth. It was also sort of not the truth.

 

So she led them away from the tavern, and down the road towards the house. They didn’t notice – or maybe they didn’t say anything – the sign on the side of the road that said Lionett Winery, with an arrow pointing in its direction. Then, she remembered that they didn’t know her surname.

 

Everything that she’d been so carefully hiding behind locked doors, that was all about to come into the open.

 

‘Hooly shit,’ Fjord said, as they rounded the corner up the path. Beau wasn’t surprised. On first sight, the house was pretty fucking big, and that was without seeing the rest of the grounds. ‘You grew up here?’

 

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Beau told him. If never being allowed to leave, never being able to make friends, or have any fun was really growing up, then yeah, she had grown up here.

 

‘And you ran away to become a monk?’ he asked, incredulously. Beau opened her mouth to give a smart retort. Then she remembered that of all people, Nott was the only one who knew she’d been abducted by the Cobalt Soul. Technically.

 

Forcibly recruited, was maybe a better term.

 

‘No,’ Beau said shortly. ‘I was dragged away in the middle of the night to become a monk after stealing a few thousand gold worth of wine to sell on the black market.’

 

‘Oh,’ Fjord said. There was an awkward sort of silence. After all, she had never really _disabused_ them of the notion that she had been a spoiled rich kid running away from home.

 

She unlocked the front door with the key that Carlson had given her. This was, after all, the sort of town where you locked your doors at night, lest some unsavory character and her criminal girlfriend came and stole all your stuff.

 

‘Okay,’ she said, as the door clicked shut behind them. ‘Welcome to the shitshow.’


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five

 

_Seven_ _Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Tori taught Beau to do all the things that Lob had never bothered to. Taught her how to pick a lock, how to sneak through dark alleyways without getting caught, taught her how to tell a lie so good not even the most perceptive Crownsguard would pick up on it.

 

After all of that, there were a few other things she taught Beau as well.

 

Beau’s first forays into sex were clumsy and brief, but every night she spent at the _Cliff’s Keep_ , things started to make a little more sense.

 

Tori, for her part, was patient, and kind, and way more skilled with a tongue than Beau knew anyone could be. She didn’t push Beau into anything she didn’t want to do, whether in bed, or in anything else.

 

They pulled a few small-time jobs, of the sort where Beau could get her feet wet without drawing too much attention to themselves. If they stole, it was from people who could afford it, and if they did a little more than steal, they tried not to get innocents involved.

 

The best job they pulled was one that didn’t gain a single gold piece in financial reward. Beau went “undercover,” so to speak, as a housemaid for a local politician, in order to dig up dirt. He’d been promising to crack down on crime in Kamordah, but somehow that crime didn’t involve his drinking buddies and their extortion.

 

That job had earned her quite a few pats on the back in the _Cliff’s Keep_ , after the dickhead resigned, and when Beau returned home, her parents hadn’t noticed she’d been gone at all.

 

Beau was itching to leave Kamordah, but for some unfathomable reason, Tori wanted to stay. Since Beau went wherever Tori did, it looked as though she’d be staying in Kamordah for at least a few months more, yet.

 

‘I was talking to some friends back home,’ Tori was saying. Beau still hadn’t figured out exactly where “home” was. ‘They’re talking about expanding one of their operations a bit. You think you’d be interested in something a bit more serious?’

 

She was talking about crime, Beau knew, but in her head, it was so hard to separate the jobs that they pulled from everything else they did. They were partners in crime, as well as partners in various other areas as well.

 

Beau was pretty sure she wasn’t thinking about crime when she said “Yes.”

 

 

…

 

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

 

The group stood silently in the hallway for a few long, awkward seconds. ‘This is the, uh...foyer,’ Beau said. She wasn’t exactly a hosting sort of person.

 

Carlson was waiting at the doorway. He raised a thin, graying eyebrow at the eclectic group that she had brought in with her.

 

Kamordah, was, after all, was mostly humans and halflings. There weren’t many tieflings, or firbolgs, or half-orcs wandering the streets. Nott, at the very least, could pass as a halfling. ‘These are your friends?’ he asked, and Beau heard the thinly veiled disdain in his voice. _Come on, buddy. Just as I was about ready to start maybe liking you_. ‘Shall I fetch refreshments?’

 

‘Uh...’ Beau said. She gave a quick glance to Nott, who was examining – rather closely – a vase on the mantelpiece. ‘Sure,’ she said. Given that they weren’t going through a dungeon of horrors right now, things would probably be okay. Then, she remembered that it was ten o’clock in the morning, and drinks for normal people didn’t generally include alcohol at that time of the day.

 

Instead, it included meats, and fancy cheeses, and (after a quick word to Carlson) fresh fruits and vegetables for Caduceus.

 

‘I thought this was a _winery_ ,’ Nott said, disappointed, when the jugs of ice-cold water were set down on the table.

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau said. ‘Which means we _sell_ all the wine.’

 

‘Except the stuff that you steal,’ the goblin said, pointedly.

 

_Right,_ Beau agreed. But, since the winery would probably be going to her brother, she decided that they probably shouldn’t take any more than was necessary. But that was something that could wait until after the funerals to be dealt with.

 

A little part of Beau had expected that the funerals would be over and done with by the time she’d arrived in Kamordah. That she would rock up, say a few meaningless words to their gravestones, and head back out into the world. The fact that there was all this _stuff_ that had to be done was equal parts irritating, and draining.

 

Whether consciously, or unconsciously, Beau knew she had been avoiding seeing her brother since that first meeting in the parlor. Now that she thought of it, it was kind of selfish of her.

 

She thought maybe that it would be a good idea to nip it in the bud, and bring Frederick down to meet her friends. After all, they were an important part of her life. Maybe the _most_ important part of her life.

 

‘Hey Carlson,’ she said, in a low undertone. ‘Could we maybe bring Frederick down? So I can...spend some time with him?’

 

‘Of course,’ Carlson agreed. ‘He is in his lessons at the moment, but he’s a bright boy, so missing one day won’t hurt.’ He directed the maid that had brought the food go and fetch Frederick and his nanny.

 

_Right_. Kids had to learn things. Beau had almost forgotten what a normal life was like. It certainly didn’t involve sleeping in a different inn every night, fighting hydras, and dragons, and demons from another plane of existence.

 

‘Does he know?’ Beau asked. ‘That they’re dead?’

 

‘Oh, yes,’ Carlson said. ‘Of course, I don’t know that he understands, but he was quite close to your parents.’

 

There was something about that last sentence that sent Beau’s mind reeling. The whole world seemed a little farther away. _He was quite close to your parents_.

 

So it was just her that they hated.

 

Or, more accurately, she’d been enough of a shit that they’d been forced to hate her.

 

Her whole life, people had gone around calling her smart-mouthed, or unpleasant, or horribly abrasive, sometimes from the people she’d thought were her friends. As though it was her fault she couldn’t gauge what peoples’ reactions were going to be to the things she said. As though she ever could have been anything else. Sometimes (though she had gotten a little better at this over the years) she could see herself digging a hole deeper and deeper with no way of being able to stop herself from sounding like a bitch.

 

After a while, she’d just gotten it into her head that that was what she was supposed to be; the unpleasant, abrasive, smart-mouthed bitch, who pushed everyone away rather than let them get close to her. After all, they couldn’t leave her if she left them first.

 

Somehow, though, she’d managed to find a group of people that were willing to stick around. That had accompanied her to deal with something she really didn’t want to deal with, even though it meant taking time away from the things that they really wanted to do.

 

‘I don’t know how the salaries are paid around here,’ Beau said. ‘But for your trouble...’ She handed Carlson a small pouch with a couple of hundred gold in it. ‘Thanks for everything, man.’

 

Carlson looked stunned, but appreciative. ‘Thank-you,’ he said. ‘Fortunately, our salaries are paid for the month, but continuing, that will be a matter for you to discuss with the Executor after the funerals.’

 

‘Sure, whatever,’ Beau said, not even really listening. She hardly noticed as Carlson returned to the kitchen to prepare more food, which Jester and Nott had summarily demolished. There was something else on her mind; her gaze kept getting drawn back to Yasha, the aasimar more awkward than Beau had ever seen her, sitting on an antique couch, eating caviar with crackers.

 

‘Beau,’ Yasha said. Beau started. Surely Yasha hadn’t seen her staring. But no. Yasha was looking at the wall, and it took Beau a few seconds to realize what she was looking at. ‘Is that you?’

 

Beau fucking hated that picture. She had been all of four years old when it was painted, and she had been forced into a pink frilly dress, that she had hated then, and hated now. Though she quite clearly remembered screaming her lungs out, crying, refusing to put the fucking dress on, the artist had painted her with a serene expression that Beau did not think she had ever used in her life.

 

Beau had the sudden urge to take the picture, and throw it into the crackling fire. There were a few pictures around she would quite happily do that to.In fact, probably most of them.

 

‘Yeah,’ she said darkly.

 

‘Oh,’ Yasha said. ‘I never picked you for wearing dresses.’

 

‘I hated wearing dresses,’ Beau said, through gritted teeth. ‘After that picture got painted, I cut it to pieces, and tried to throw it out with the rest of the garbage.’

 

‘Ya get caught?’ Fjord asked, grinning.

 

‘Oh, for sure,’ Beau said, forgetting herself for half a moment. ‘Got caught, got screamed at, got locked in my room for a week...’ She trailed off. Fjord was looking at her, uncertainly.

 

‘For throwing away a dress?’ He sounded incredulous.

 

‘Well, it was handmade,’ Beau shrugged. ‘I’m sure it was expensive.’

 

‘One time, I got paint all down my favorite dress, and we had to throw it away,’ Jester announced. ‘Mama just laughed, and told me to be more careful next time.’

 

‘You couldn’t just use _Prestidigitation_?’ Beau asked, aware that she was missing the point of the story.

 

‘I don’t have that spell,’ Jester frowned. Beau was saved the trouble of continuing what had become a very awkward conversation, by the appearance of two people on the stairs. One very short, and one a little taller.

 

Frederick was dressed in a button-down yellow shirt, and neatly pressed dark slacks. Beau had always hated the color yellow, but she had to admit, it looked pretty good on him.

 

Today, Beau took a little more notice of the woman that accompanied him. She was a good few years older than Beau, but no less attractive for it. Grey had started to pepper its way through her dark hair. She looked kind.

 

The sort of way a nanny should look. Beau shuddered at the thought. Her own nanny, Lania had been...well, kind of a bitch. But now, Beau wondered if that was just the result of her having been a difficult child.

 

‘Hi,’ she said, ‘Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself yesterday. The name’s Beauregard,’ she said. She could feel Fjord’s eyes burning into the back of her neck. Like he was saying _are you flirting with the fucking nanny?_ She wasn’t, but apparently she wasn’t very good at telling the difference between flirting and not flirting.

 

‘Amelia,’ the nanny said, shaking Beau’s hand. ‘We were just in the middle of story-time, but Frederick was very excited to see you.’

 

Frederick ran up, and wrapped his arms around her waist. It was about as high as he could reach. He murmured something under his breath, and Beau leant down so she could hear. ‘What was that, buddy?’

 

He said it again, and she thought she could just about make out the words, ‘Hi, Beau.’

 

He sounded happy to see her. How long had it been since someone was happy to see her, present company excluded.

 

Beau went through, and introduced the Mighty Nein. He had a little trouble with “Caduceus,” and of course “Nott” was the easiest, but his pronunciation didn’t seem to bad overall. Beau had been slightly worried that something might have happened to stop him from speaking. Now, she realized he was probably just shy.

 

‘Can I show you a magic trick?’ Caleb said, looking to Beau for approval. Beau gave a slight nod. Her parents would never have allowed it, but they were dead, so who gave a fuck. Caleb pulled a glowworm from one of his many pockets, and cast _Dancing Lights._ Frederick was utterly enthralled. ‘Whoah,’ he said, in the most audible voice that Beau had heard from him so far. In spite of herself, she grinned.

 

Maybe one day, he would become a wizard, too.

 

Having her friends here was surprisingly helpful. In her head, she had drawn a very discrete line between her life now, and her life _before_ , and decided that they should never meet. Circumstance, of course, had made that meeting inevitable, but Beau was finding it not as bad as it could have been.

 

It would have been worse, she was sure, if her parents were still alive. If she had to go through the humiliation of them talking her down, of downplaying her achievements, of heaping lavishing praise on her brother while ignoring her. With them dead, though, she was able to pretend that the shitty parlor with its shitty paintings was just another fancy inn, like the _Pillow Trove_ , or the _Lavish Chateau_.

 

For a while, it was almost as though she didn’t have all that other bullshit to deal with.

 

Beau had considered taking Caduceus with her to the meeting with the undertakers. Then, she thought that he might ask weird questions, like the type of flowers that they would grow on the gravesites. It would be weird to ask Yasha (“Hey, Yasha, I know I tried to kiss you yesterday, but do you want to come with me and help plan my parents’ funerals?”), and she wasn’t nearly so much of an asshole as to ask Caleb, who had killed his parents, or Fjord, who had never known his.

 

In the end, to Beau’s surprise, Nott volunteered to accompany her. Later, she realized it wasn’t so weird at all. She was a person who had just lost her parents (albeit the parents that she sort of hated), and Nott was a woman that had been separated from her son going on months now.

 

The undertakers asked all sorts of questions that Beau didn’t know the answer to, like what kind of fucking flowers she wanted, and what should go on the gravestones. Beau had to bite her tongue to stop herself from saying “good riddance.”

 

She vaguely recalled thinking about how they’d kept the bodies...well, fresh for so long. It wasn’t until the undertaker told her, ‘We keep them on ice,’ that she realized she’d asked the question out loud.

 

‘Oh,’ she said. The answer wasn’t really important. She was just curious. Then, they asked if she wanted to see the bodies. For some sort of closure.

 

Beau didn’t even think about it. ‘No.’

 

It took a couple of hours, but they managed to get the details sorted out. The funeral would take place in three days, to give anyone coming from out of town enough time to get there, and if any of them lived more than three days away, then fuck ‘em. Beau just wanted to get the whole thing over and done with.

 

Afterwards, the only thing Beau wanted to do was leave the house, and get away from the bullshit for a bit.

 

‘I’ll join you,’ Nott said, clearly missing the fact that Beau wanted to be alone. Either way, Beau was all assholed out, and didn’t stop the goblin from accompanying her to a nearby hilltop. Not the same hilltop that yesterday’s disastrous encounter had taken place on. Beau wasn’t _that_ much of a masochist.

 

‘Are you alright?’ Nott asked nervously, after they’d been sitting there in silence for an hour or so. Beau had not stopped staring out at the Cyrios Mountains in the middle-distance.

 

‘I—’ Beau started, and all of a sudden, the floodgates opened. All the things she’d been thinking, feeling, dreaming about the past couple of days, came rushing through at once. ‘I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop,’ Beau said. ‘All this shit that I remember, that happened to me. Was that just skewed by me being young, or was I so horrible a kid that they had no choice but to treat me so badly?’

 

She sighed. ‘Whoever lived in that house apparently loved their daughter. But it wasn’t _me_ that they loved.’

 

Nott edged a little closer to Beau. For the most part, she only ever really got “motherly” with Caleb, and occasionally Jester. There had been enough friction, for lack of a better word, between them. ‘Did I ever tell you about my son, Luc?’

 

‘We met him,’ Beau pointed out.

 

‘Oh yeah,’ Nott said. ‘Hmm. But you don’t really _know_ him. Anyway, as a little boy, Luc was...well, a bit like me.’

 

Beau grinned. She couldn’t help it.

 

‘Good, for the most part, but occasionally he did things that got him into trouble.’

 

‘Sounds like a few people I know,’ Beau said. She didn’t look away from the piercing blue sky. It comforted her, somehow. Under this sky, she could be anywhere in the world. Didn’t have to be Kamordah.

 

‘Once, he chased our neighbor’s cat up a tree, and wouldn’t let it come down.’

 

That wasn’t too bad, Beau reasoned. As long as the cat came down unharmed.

 

‘It jumped on his face and scratched him,’ Nott concluded. ‘Anyway, of course, he was grounded. Wasn’t allowed out to play with his friends, wasn’t allowed dessert after dinner – not that we had much money for dessert.’

 

‘I was never allowed out,’ Beau said, gloomily. Okay, that was a slight exaggeration. She was allowed out to work – to come out to the vineyards, or to the cellars, or to destem the grapes, if they were short of hands. The Lionett Winery was one of the few in the region that grew its own grapes, which meant there was ten times as much work. ‘Wasn’t allowed to make friends, wasn’t allowed to play…Just study, and work, and...’ She trailed off.

 

‘Beau,’ Nott said, as gently as Beau had ever heard her speak. ‘It’s not a child’s job to make themselves worthy of love. It’s the parent’s job to make sure they love their children anyway. If your parents made you feel unworthy of love, then that’s on them, not on you. And maybe it’s not my place to say, but from everything you’ve said about them, your parents sound like fucking assholes. Good parents don’t pay to have their children abducted by a secret order of monks.’

 

Beau was silent for a good, long while. Somehow, those few words had struck to the very heart of all the conflicting things that she had been feeling over the past few weeks.

 

‘It’s like...I feel like they tried to have the best of both worlds – wanted me to be the son that they’d been promised, but didn’t let me do anything that any other boy was allowed to do.’ She sighed. ‘Fuck, it’s no wonder I’m such a fuck-up.’

 

Nott put a clawed hand on Beau’s shoulder. It was a strange gesture, but welcomed just the same. ‘If you’re a fuck-up, then we’re all fuck-ups. That’s why we’re together.’

 

‘Thanks, Nott,’ Beau grinned. It was probably the closest thing to a moment that she’d ever had with the goblin. She was feeling a little bit better about finally being able to put all this shit in the ground, and bury it deep.

 

Even still, she was dreading the fact that she would have to do it.

 

The next couple of days passed in a blur. Beau slept in her old bed, the first night, and consequently had one of the recurring nightmares she thought she’d long since left behind. The night after that, she decided to ask Yasha if she wouldn’t mind swapping rooms.

 

‘I can swap if you want, Beau,’ Jester said, and Beau went beet red at the idea of having to share a room with Yasha. That step might just push their awkwardness over the breaking point, causing Yasha to leave again.

 

‘Uh,’ Beau said, and Yasha saved her the trouble of coming up with an excuse.

 

‘It’s okay, I don’t mind,’ Yasha said. She smiled at Beau, but it was a smile that Beau couldn’t quite interpret. She’d always had trouble with facial expressions. So Beau moved all of her things into the spare room with Jester, and let Yasha take her childhood bedroom.

 

Another day, that thought might have thrilled her, but today, well, Beau just wanted to sleep.

 

The morning of the funeral ( _funerals?_ ) dawned, and Beau had awoken from the best sleep she’d ever had in that godsdamned house. She dressed carefully; not because she had any compunction to be respectful, but because she knew if she didn’t, their voices would haunt the back of her mind for the next hundred years.

 

_Insolent child, couldn’t even be bothered to dress the part for our funeral._

 

But, in all honesty, those voices were going to be there anyway. After all, it had always been them that cast the self-doubt in her mind.

 

‘You look...really nice,’ Yasha said, when Beau entered the dining room for breakfast. The rest of the Mighty Nein were already there, dressed as nicely as they could be for traveling mercenaries. Beau scowled. It was starting to piss her off, even though it really shouldn’t. She knew that it wasn’t the intention, but it was starting to feel like Yasha was jerking her around.

 

‘Thanks,’ Beau muttered. She loaded up a plate with bacon and toast, and sat at the end of the table, away from anyone else. She realized, now, that she probably should have gotten dressed _after_ breakfast.

 

‘Miss Beauregard,’ came Carlson’s voice, from the doorway. ‘I’m just finalizing arrangements for the wake, to be held in the main parlor.’

 

‘Sure,’ Beau said. She’d gladly passed over responsibility for arranging that part of the day’s proceedings to him. It had been bad enough trying to organize everything else.

 

‘There will, of course, be speeches and eulogies, if you’d care to say something.’

 

‘No,’ Beau said, shortly. Any words that came out of her mouth regarding the matter would be either insincere, or inappropriate for a funeral. ‘I’m sure there enough people that kissed my father’s ass that would be willing to make a grand speech about what a wonderful person he was.’

 

Carslon looked a bit reproachful, but said nothing. _Ha!_ First time for everything.

 

After breakfast, they all gave themselves one last tidy-up, and followed an impromptu procession to the cemetery. In one of the back corners, there were a stretch of graves, both empty and otherwise, that had been set aside for use by the Lionett family. Beau remembered having come here as a child, to bury her grandparents. She remembered less of the funeral, and more the itchy wool of the dark coat she’d been forced to wear.

 

Not particularly wanting to talk to any of the people that her parents had associated with, Beau kept to the back of the row of chairs that had been set up by the undertakers. Even still, their motley crew drew no small amount of attention, and she found herself besieged upon by dickheads that hadn’t bothered to be nice to her while her parents were alive, and that she didn’t want to deal with now that they were dead.

 

Yasha, to her credit, was pretty good help. She didn’t even need to pump out the wings, just stood in front of Beau with a menacing expression, like a bodyguard, and stopped anyone else from getting past.

 

‘Thanks,’ Beau muttered to her, once they’d all sat down, and the...ceremony? Beau wasn’t sure what you were supposed to call a funeral. Ceremony, she supposed, was as good a word as any. The ceremony commenced.

 

Caduceus seemed almost offended at the thought of people being buried in wooden boxes. He looked as though he wanted to march right up there, pull them out, and _Decompose_ them right there on top of the soil.

 

Beau wouldn’t have minded. It would have been fucking funny, for one thing. For another, it would have ensured that their stupid, pointless deaths would have meant something. That they could have nourished something in death that they had never bothered to in life. She wondered what kind of wine their corpses could have made.

 

‘Are you alright?’ Caleb asked, quietly. He was watching the pensive look on her face.

 

‘Yes,’ Beau lied. She didn’t know what she was, but “alright” certainly wasn’t it. At least, after this it would mostly be over. She could get on with her life, and never worry about what her parents might think of her ever again.

 

She didn’t know how wrong she was.


	6. Chapter Six

 

Chapter Six

 

_Seven Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beau liked Tori because she was...well, normal. She could pick any lock you gave her, and convince the bartender that they’d already paid the twenty gold tab, and could convince a tortle to give up his shell, but she wasn’t inborn with amazing magical powers, or blessed by a god, like some of the people that came through Kamordah, but because of that, she treated Beau like _she_ was special. Like she wasn’t some punk kid with daddy issues.

 

‘You _are_ special, Beau,’ Tori would say, before giving her a flower, or a bracelet, or a kiss on the cheek. Beau wasn’t much one for jewelry, but for Tori, she could make an exception. They smoked suude together out on one of the hillsides that surrounded Kamordah, and for the first time in her life, Beau felt happy.

 

The fact that they were distributing a few thousand gold worth of suude every month was just the icing on the cake.

 

It was pointless to leave now. Not that they had such a good toehold on the market. A couple of other groups had tried to edge in on their territory, and Beau had left it to Tori to deal with. She was the charismatic one, after all. Beau didn’t know what she did to change their minds, but they didn’t try to muscle in again.

 

They always said – or Beau always said, and Tori never disagreed – that once they’d made five thousand gold, they’d run away together, and never look back. Every now and then, though, they lost enough money (on bad deals, or on bad product, or on bad customers) that that promise was starting to feel like forever away.

 

Beau had been taken in by the Crownsguard a couple of times now, for petty, stupid things she never should have gotten caught doing. This time, she hadn’t been so lucky, and both her mother and her father had screamed at her until their voices went hoarse. When Beau managed to sneak out of the house again, a week later, it was with a black eye, and a split lip. She was lucky that they hadn’t caught her doing the _really_ bad stuff.

 

‘You want me to kill him?’ Tori asked, as she peppered kisses down Beau’s neck. Beau considered it, briefly. She wasn’t sure of Tori was joking or not, but on the off chance she wasn’t…

 

‘Nah.’ Not that she hadn’t seriously considered it. But, in the end, it would draw way to much attention to all the other stuff going on. The last thing Beau needed was for the Crownsguard to be poking around in her life.

 

She would get away from them – get away from Kamordah – eventually, and when she did, she would never look back.

 

But until then, she had Tori.

 

 

…

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beau returned to the house with the rest of the Mighty Nein, that ball of anxiety in her chest feeling lighter than it had in days. She didn’t think it was normal to feel so carefree after having attended a funeral, let alone that of your parents.

 

There was still, of course, the wake to get through, but at least there would be booze at that.

 

Wine glass in hand, she carefully avoided all of her parents’ asshole friends, and sequestered herself in a corner with her own asshole friends. They enjoyed the running commentary she gave under her breath as to the identities of the various socialites and silver-spooned shitheads. At least, the ones she remembered.

 

‘Oh, there’s Lawrence Remmington,’ she said. ‘He used to have a really successful brewing company, until something happened to it. He was underpaying and overworking all his staff.’

 

‘What happened to the brewing company?’ Nott asked, shrewdly.

 

‘Something,’ Beau shrugged. Something involving an intrepid young criminal. ‘There’s Leland – he’s an asshole, he helps run the winery.’ She pointed out a tall, dark-haired man, who had been a few years younger than her father.

 

‘Are any of these people _not_ “assholes”?’ Fjord asked, with a raised eyebrow.

 

Beau shrugged. ‘Doubt it.’

 

‘Ooh,’ Jester said. ‘I wonder if any of these people ever visited my Mom.’

 

‘Probably,’ Beau said, now that she thought about it. ‘We sold a lot of wine to the Menagerie Coast.’ Jester’s expression turned to one of ecstatic delight, and she wandered off to see if she could recognize any of the funeral guests.

 

Caleb  had  disappeared, possibly, Beau thought, because he expected that this might be the sort of place where someone high up in the Empire might come calling. It was a good thing no-one knew the role that they’d played in returning the Luxon beacon to the Kryn Dynasty, otherwise Beau was pretty sure the funeral would have turned into a bloodbath. 

 

Not that she would have minded too much. It would have been a great final “fuck you,” to her parents.

 

Even still, Beau found herself getting teary at weirdly random moments. It was as though she was mourning not her parents, but the parents that they could have been.  It didn’t help, of course, that Frederick had escaped from Amelia’s grip, and latched himself onto Beau’s side. Beau found herself absent-mindedly stroking his hair. Somehow, it kept her grounded.

 

Staying with him was the only thing that kept her from running away upstairs, and when he started sobbing loudly, Beau gladly took advantage of the excuse to go upstairs.  The rest of her friends stayed to “run interference” as Nott put it, but Beau had the distinct impression that some of them  (Yasha and Fjord, mainly) were having quite a good time casually intimidating the asshole socialites.

 

Frederick’s room was tidy. Far tidier than hers had ever been. He had a neat little blue bed, and a neat little wooden dresser, and a finely crafted toy chest filled with wooden blocks. 

 

There was a rather large portrait on the wall – of mother, and father, and Beau. Beau stared at it. She had forgotten about that disastrous portrait. It had been painted over a series of weekly sessions, during which she had changed her hair about six times, just to make things difficult. She would have thought they’d have  thrown this  away , after her brother’s birth.  Thrown away every trace of ever having had a daughter, let alone an insolent brat that found trouble at every turn. She kind of wanted to throw it away now, but every now and then Frederick looked up at it with glowing admiration, and she decided to let it be. If it was true – if he had really been close with their parents – then Beau didn’t want to ruin his happy memories.

 

‘That’s you,’ he said, pointing up at the picture.

 

‘Yeah, that’s me,’ Beau nodded. Frederick beamed at her. He was just so fucking excited to finally meet his big sister, and Beau felt a wave of guilt that she would be leaving soon.

 

She hadn’t even discussed with Carlson what would happen to Frederick. She supposed that was just another fucking conversation that she would have to have. How quickly her life had changed; talking about domestic issues, rather than gnolls in mines, or giants in mines, or how they’d almost single-handedly changed the course of the war between Xhorhas and the Empire.

 

‘Are you staying?’ Frederick asked, and Beau was caught a little by surprise. She wasn’t exactly an expert in these matters, but she hadn’t expected him to be capable of full sentences.

 

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted, which was the truth.

 

‘Please stay,’ he said, and Beau felt her heart break just a tiny bit.

 

_ Ah, fuck _ .

 

…

 

The next morning, Carlson was the only one downstairs, when Beau arrived for breakfast. Her mind was still caught up in the events of the previous day. The funeral, and the wake, and everything that had followed.

 

She had seen almost everyone she’d expected to at the funeral, save one.

 

‘What happened to the Truthseer dude?’ she asked Carlson. The Truthseer – Beau must have known his actual name, once upon a time – had been the fortune teller that had told her parents that they would be having a boy. They had picked out the name Beauregard especially, and hadn’t bothered to change it when the fortune teller turned out to be full of shit. Somehow, that had been the fault of their infant daughter, instead.

 

Beau had watched her father continue to take advice from the Truthseer. Some of it resulted in profit, some hadn’t. It was the reason Beau had never taken much trust in fortune tellers.

 

‘The Truthseer?’ Carslon laughed, perhaps a little bitterly. ‘Your father almost lost everything he owned to that charlatan. He’s in the bottom of a dungeon in Deastock, now. Rotting, most likely.’

 

‘Huh,’ Beau said. Wonders never ceased. The dickhead who might well have been responsible for ruining her life was facing his just desserts.

 

‘Your father’s lawyer, Devos has been assisting in providing financial and other such advice.’

 

‘Sure,’ Beau said. She had met Devos once or twice, but never had any meaningful interactions.

 

‘He would like to meet with you this afternoon to go over some paperwork.’

 

‘Uh-huh,’ Beau said, a little bitterly. Of course it couldn’t have been easy. Of course she couldn’t just duck in and out of this situation like it was nothing. It was ridiculous. No-one that had ever met Beau could imagine her as the sort of person that would go to _meetings._ Unless it was a meeting between a fist and a face.

 

‘Miss Lionett,’ Devos greeted Beau, when Carlson led him into the parlor that afternoon. He didn’t seem to notice the way that Beau bristled at the name. Instead, he settled himself into the chair, and opened his briefcase. Two steaming mugs of tea sat on the table between them, courtesy of Caduceus.

 

‘You may be aware that your parents instructed me to pen their Wills, advising directions for the dispersal of their Estate in the event of their deaths.’

 

Beau gave a slight snort. She’d forgotten just how much of a stick up the ass this dude had. Wouldn’t use a short word if he could use a long word.

 

‘They were, of course rewritten after the birth of your brother, Frederick,’ he continued.

 

She wasn’t surprised that they had been rewritten. Most likely they’d been rewritten to cut her out of it entirely.

 

‘As Frederick is still a minor, his interests will be looked after by a Trustee,’ Devos told her. Beau frowned. Someone else would be looking after all the money until Frederick came of age? That didn’t seem right. Not that she wanted – or needed – the money, but if it was supposed to go to Frederick, then it should go to him. ‘As you are of age, your interest will go to you directly.’

 

Beau frowned.  _What?_ ‘My interest?’ she asked, feeling like kind of an idiot. ‘What interest?’ She took a long swig of the tea, hoping that it would calm her nerves. No such luck.

 

Devos cleared his throat,  and read from one of the documents he was holding .  ‘ “ I give to my daughter, Beauregard Lionett, all shares in the Lionett family Winery.”’ Beau almost choked on her drink.

 

_What the fuck?_

 

She snatched the document out of Devos’s hand. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ she asked.

 

‘That was your father’s wish,’ he told her. This had to be some kind of mistake. She kept reading from that part onwards. 

 

A line near the bottom caught her eye.

 

‘ _To my children if more than one, then in equal shares…_ ’ Beau read. ‘What does this mean?’ she demanded, thrusting the paper back at Devos, and pointing at the line. It seemed like an important one.

 

Devos stared at her, a little confused. ‘As both you and your brother survived your parents by a period of thirty days, the remainder of the Estate is to be shared equally between you.’

 

Beau’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why?’ she asked. That didn’t make any sense. Her parents had hated her. Why would they have bothered leaving her anything, let alone half of what they owned. Let alone the fucking  _Winery_ .

 

‘In Wills that are not out of the ordinary, we don’t generally take notes as to the “why,”’ he said. ‘It’s perfectly normal for parents to divide an Estate evenly among their children.’

 

‘Have you met my parents?’ Beau muttered.

 

‘Yes,’ Devos said, patiently. ‘As I’ve just told you, I prepared their Last Will and Testament. Trust me when I say your father and mother were both of sound mind when they instructed the preparation of these documents.’

 

‘What if I don’t want it?’ Beau said. She had said it before she even realized she was thinking it.

 

Devos arched an eyebrow. ‘We  _are_ talking about a considerable sum of money, without even going into the business. If you were to disclaim your interest, the Estate would fall to Frederick, whose interests, as we discussed...’

 

‘Would be overseen by a Trustee.’ Beau swore. She didn’t particularly want any of it, but there was a small part of her that did not want to stand idly by while her younger brother’s “interests” were looked after by a complete stranger.

 

‘There is, of course,’ he continued. ‘Also the matter of young Master Frederick’s guardianship.’

 

Beau’s head jerked upwards. ‘Huh?’

 

‘He will be in need of a carer, which was not stipulated in the Wills. As his closest living relative, you would be the likely choice to take custody.’

 

Beau stared at him. ‘You must have me confused with someone else,’ she said. She didn’t want kids. She was fucking twenty-four; still a godsdamned kid herself. 

 

This wasn’t her. She wasn’t the responsible person that people asked to do important things. She was the weird fuck-up that people sighed about, and said things like “is she ever going to grow up?”

 

Nobody in their right mind would ask her to adopt a kid.

 

Okay, he hadn’t said adopt, he’d said “be the guardian of,” which was just as ridiculous. She was the person that had, not seven days ago, charged a behir and ended up inside of its stomach. She had crawled out of there, covered in bile and blood and guts, after Yasha sliced it open, ready to go again.

 

‘If you are unwilling to take him, the matter will fall to the Lawbearer,’ Devos told her.

 

Fuck. 

 

B eau had met Kamordah’s Lawbearer.

 

Multiple times.

 

He was a fucking dickhead. He’d been the one that arrested her that last time, and had spat in her face, and kicked her in the ribs for good measure.

 

She couldn’t let her brother’s fate be decided by the Lawbearer. He would end up...he would end up with someone like her parents. Someone that would teach him that he was superior, just by virtue of the amount of money that he had, or the fact that he was the boy his parents had always wanted.

 

‘I mean, if I could find someone willing to adopt him,’ Beau said, but she knew it was a longshot. Funnily enough, most people didn’t appreciate having a four-year-old dumped in their lap.

 

“It’s okay,” she wanted to say, “While I’m off fighting monsters, I’ll leave him in the custody of a well-known courtesan.” Not that she thought the Ruby of the Sea would be a terrible guardian. Just...maybe not the greatest of locations for a shy, four-year-old orphan to grow up.

 

Fuck. They were orphans now. Not that it made any difference to Beau, but she supposed she could at least empathize a little more with a couple of her friends.

 

The house was, technically, half hers. She assumed that that meant they couldn’t sell the house until Frederick came of age. ‘Not necessarily,’ Devos told her,  when she asked about this . ‘As Trustees, we can make financial decisions on your brother’s behalf if they are in his best interest. A house such as this one requires a lot of upkeep – a sale might be prudent in order to secure the best fiduciary outcome.’

 

Beau stared at him. ‘I’m sorry, what?’

 

He sighed, as if her questions were beneath him. ‘Given that it costs so much for servants, and butlers, and gardeners, if you sold the house now, you would make more money in the long run.’

 

‘But the Winery’s attached to the house,’ Beau said. She wasn’t even sure why she said it. She didn’t _want_ to run the stupid Winery after all. If they were going to sell the house, they might as well sell the fucking Winery, too.

 

‘Well, given that the Winery is running at a loss,’ Devos said. ‘I would have thought you would prefer to sell.’

 

The words struck a strange chord. ‘Running at a loss?’ Beau frowned.

 

‘It means—’

 

‘I’m not a fucking idiot,’ Beau interjected. ‘I know what “running at a loss” means. This winery sells a hundred thousand bottles of wine a year, how the fuck is it running at a loss?’

 

‘There are, of course, outlays—’

 

‘I know what the outlays are,’ Beau snapped. ‘I spent two years skimming off the top of this business, because I was the one keeping the books. I may look like an idiot, Mr Fancy, but I know that this winery should not be running at a loss.’ He looked startled. Most people did when they realized that she wasn’t as dumb as she looked.

 

‘I need to talk to Leland,’ she muttered. Leland, her father’s business partner. Well, business partner was a strong word. Her mother had been the main business partner, but Leland had helped run the business.

 

If there was something shady going on, Beau was absolutely going to find out.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter may be a little triggering in terms of abuse, so I would proceed with caution.

Chapter Seven

 

_Seven Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

They came in the night, swords drawn, and shields steady.

 

Why they thought two women (one a teenager, and one just barely not) were going to be a problem, especially two women that were in bed asleep, wrapped around each other.  They certainly didn’t need six fully grown, fully armored men to drag them from their bed, not even realizing that they were under arrest until Beau saw the distinctive emblem of the Kamordah Crownsguard.

 

They had just barely consented to letting Beau put her shirt back on, but even then, she still sat half naked on the bed, arms manacled behind her while they searched the room. Not that there was anything incriminating in there.

 

Beau might have been young and stupid, but she wasn’t that stupid. All of their stock was hidden in a cave in one of the mountains that surrounded Kamordah. She supposed that they would question her and Tori until they found it.

 

‘We’ll be okay,’ Tori murmured under her breath, to Beau. Her dark hair was slicked with sweat, which tickled Beau’s neck, as Tori laid her head against it.

 

‘No talking,’ one of the guards yelled, and before either of them could do anything, he had whacked Tori across the back of the head with the pommel of his sword. Not that there _was_ anything they could have done.

 

Tori gave a loud gasp of pain, but as far as Beau could tell, it had been to get them to stop talking, rather than intended to hurt. Even still, Beau didn’t particularly like seeing her in pain.

 

‘Careful, asshole,’ Beau said, before she could stop herself. She winced as she anticipated the pommel coming for her next. The guard seemed to consider it, for a moment, but at the last moment, changed his mind. ‘You okay?’

 

Tori nodded, but didn’t dare speak again.  The Crownsguard separated them after that, as though afraid the whispers of reassurances that they shared were part of a conspiracy to escape.  Still, both of them knew enough to keep their mouths shut, even as the guards dragged them away to the cells beneath the Kamordah stockade.

 

T hey didn’t make the same mistake twice, and put Beau and Tori in separate cells, well out of sight of each other. If Beau had known that she would never see Tori again, she would have made more of an effort to say goodbye.

 

She sat in the cell for what felt like hours, before one of the guards came for her.  He threw Beau’s pants back at her, and, hands still cuffed behind her, they hit her in the face. ‘Put those on,’ he ordered.

 

‘Ya wanna uncuff me first?’

 

He seemed to consider it for a moment. ‘No.’

 

Darkly embarrassed, Beau shifted around on the cold ground, trying to get her pants back on while the guard watched. It took the better part of ten minutes, after which the guard pulled her roughly to her feet, and dragged her through the cellblock to the ground floor of the stockade.

 

Beau tried to look into the other cells, to see if she could see Tori, but she was so dark, and she was dragged past so quickly.

 

Her father was waiting for her in the Lawbearer’s office. His face was etched with an emotion beyond anger, beyond fury. Without even saying a word, he backhanded her across the face. Hands still manacled, Beau couldn’t quite steady herself, and fell to the ground, eyes watering. When he pulled her up, it was by the ear, causing one of her piercings to tear a little bit.

 

Beau stumbled along behind him, rubbing her sore wrists after the cuffs were removed. The worst part was, he didn’t say anything.

 

Usually, he had no moral qualms about shouting her down in the Lawbearer’s office. He had done it half a dozen times before. This time, he waited until they were back in the house, at the door to the wine cellar. His tirade was long, and filled with spittle. Every time she flinched, he stepped forward, backing her into the cellar.

 

‘Did you ever even stop to think,’ he hissed, ‘About what this could do for my business?’ Beau rolled her eyes. That was all he ever seemed to think about. His wants, his needs. _His_ business.

 

He backhanded her again, and Beau almost bit down on her tongue at the force of it. ‘Don’t you roll your eyes at me, young lady.’ She wasn’t sure he liked the way his voice sounded on the word “lady.” As though that was the worst part of this whole endeavor.

 

No, the worst part was the fact that the Crownsguard had  apparently  _told_ him about the fact that she’d been in bed with Tori when they came crashing in. He’d backhanded her for that, too; well-respected daughters of winemakers didn’t go around sleeping with lower-class trash. Of course, she didn’t think he would have been nearly as upset if it had been a lower-class boy that she’d been caught with. Just another one of those ways how life would have been easier if she’d been a boy.

 

‘Stay in here for a while,’ he snarled. ‘And think about what you’ve done.’

 

The cellar door clicked shut behind Beau, and she was vaguely aware of the lock slamming into place. It wasn’t the first time she’d been locked in here, and it certainly wasn’t the last. Sprawled across the dusty floor Beau didn’t move for what felt like hours, but was probably only about twenty minutes. Finally, body groaning in pain, she rolled over onto her back.

 

Not bothering to stem the flow of blood from her nose that was now dripping down her face, Beau stared up at the ceiling. The workers all knew better than to try and come in here when the door was padlocked shut. The last one that had tried to intervene had been fired unceremoniously. 

 

This time, she thought her wrist might have been broken. She certainly didn’t think that it was supposed to bend that way.

 

Time passed slowly, the same way it always did when she ended up down here. Tori, no doubt, was still locked in a cell somewhere, waiting for Beau to come back, not knowing that she never would.

 

If her father had taken a hands off approach to her sneaking out before, then that would certainly change.

 

True enough, when Beau returned to her bedroom the next day – bruised, bleeding, and a little defeated – was the heavy lock on the door and the window.

 

Well, fuck.

 

A thought was forming in the back of her head. A thought borne from hours of lying on the cold, hard ground, staring up at thousands of bottles of wine.  A thought borne from hours of sitting in the straight-backed chair, painstakingly filling in ledgers. A thought borne from the angry desire to exact revenge upon her father, and somehow get Tori out of prison.

 

Beau had strange feelings about the idea.

 

It would be the first job she’d ever worked alone.

 

...

 

 

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beau couldn’t sleep.

 

It wasn’t unexpected; ever since she’d returned to this place, she’d had trouble sleeping. Not wanting to wake Jester, Beau silently crept out of bed, having made up her mind to do the thing she always used to do when she couldn’t sleep in this house.

 

The window opened silently, and Beau climbed out of it. It was a little further down the branch than her own bedroom, but the tree was big enough that Beau managed to clamber across one of the branches and down the trunk with no issues.

 

The house was haunted – not with actual ghosts, but with memories that she would sooner forget. No matter what happened, no matter what they found looking into the winery business, she knew she couldn’t stay here.

 

She had spend so long wanting to leave the damn place, that being back here was like a wave of nausea that wouldn’t go away.

 

The cheap ale  of the  _Cliff’s Keep_ got her drunk way was faster than the expensive shit, which was exactly what she wanted. Then, she didn’t have too look at the faces of the people that felt sorry for her. Everyone had known the Lionetts. Even the ones who hadn’t known them had known  _of_ them. They certainly knew, then, about the Lionett’s daughter who had been arrested over a dozen times before daddy finally had enough and sent her off to live with the monks.

 

She ignored the looks of pity, and got into a drinking contest with a couple of dwarves from Hupperdook. They beat her soundly, but she’d been playing to lose. In any case, she let the female dwarf flirt with her a bit, and didn’t say no to the invitation upstairs.

 

‘Just so you know,’ Beau said, with a slight hiccup. ‘I’ll more than likely leave in the middle of the night.’

 

‘No judgment,’ the dwarf said, grinning. Beau followed her upstairs.

 

Somehow, still three sheets to the wind, she made her way back home two hours later. The front doors were locked, but she’d come home drunk at three in the morning enough to remember which tree she had to climb to get in through her window. Not that there was anyone left to punish her for the tardiness.

 

It had been a while, and she missed a couple of branches in the dark, landing heavily on her ankle. When she finally managed to heave herself over the window sill, she forgot about the table that was now there, and rolled over it, onto the wooden floors.

 

For  what felt like a long while, Beau lay there, unmoving. Eventually, she’d have to get up, but honestly, she didn’t really want to. She’d slept in worse places than this. She could fall asleep here if she had to.

 

Then, there was the sound of someone jumping out of bed, followed by a soft whisper. ‘Beau, are you okay? I heard a noise.’ Yasha. Beau had forgotten that she had switched rooms with Yasha. She was so used to sneaking back in through her own window.

 

She supposed she should have been flattered that the barbarian cared so much for her well-being, but she was beyond flattery right now. Beyond everything except “oh Gods, why does my head hurt so much?”

 

Beau gave a groan of assent, which came out sounding a lot more like a groan of pain. She was unsurprised, then, when Yasha very carefully, very quietly, walked towards the window. Beau’s drunk brain thought that if she didn’t move, then maybe Yasha would think that everything was okay, and go back to bed.

 

The light wasn’t on, but, too late Beau remembered that Yasha could see in the dark. She ran to Beau’s side, and dropped to her knees. ‘Are you okay?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau murmured. ‘I fell through the window.’

 

A pause. ‘Are you drunk?’ It wasn’t a judgmental question, or at least, Beau didn’t think it was. It was just Yasha assessing the situation.

 

‘Lil’ bit,’ Beau said to the floor. Understatement of the year. Yasha stroked her back, and Beau regretted the drunkenness. She would’ve wanted to be sober for this. Wouldn’t have wanted to be – as she suddenly realized she was – softly sobbing. She had always been something of a drunk crier, but usually it was a little funnier.

 

‘What can I do?’ Yasha asked.

 

‘Help me sit up.’ Beau wasn’t prepared for Yasha’s strong arms to grip her sides, and pull her up without preamble. Her stomach roiled from the alcohol, and the general “feeling terribleness” that had overcome her the last week and a half or so.

 

‘Do you need water?’

 

_No_ , Beau started to say. Then, she realized just how parched her throat was. She must have been crying for longer than she’d realized. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘There’s a—’ Yasha had already gotten up and moved to the nightstand. Carlson put water jugs in  _all_ the rooms, Beau remembered. 

 

She gulped down two glasses before the sobs started to subside.

 

‘Are you okay?’ Yasha asked, seriously, as though she hadn’t just seen Beau crying her eyes out.

 

‘Yeah, I just…’ Beau shook her head. ‘I don’t want to be here.’

 

It felt weak, admitting it. She could handle fight demons, and aberrations, and all manner of creature, but facing her shitty childhood, that was the thing she couldn’t handle. Worse, now, she was starting to get the horrible thought that it hadn’t been that shitty, that she had just been a shitty person in general.

 

‘Do you think I’m a bad person?’ she asked, suddenly. Not the best question for lying half-drunk on her childhood bedroom floor with her semi half-crush at three in the morning.

 

She half expected Yasha to “um” and “ah” and give the sorts of non-committal answers she gave when she wasn’t quite sure about a situation. It surprised Beau then, when she said, without even stopping to think about it:

 

‘No.’

 

Beau stared at her. Without the goggles, she couldn’t see shit, but she could hear breathing, so she assumed she was looking at Yasha’s face.

 

‘A bad person wouldn’t have come here,’ Yasha said, simply. ‘A bad person wouldn’t care what happened to a family member that they’d only just met. If being here makes you feel like you’re a bad person, then I think the problem is the place, not you.’

 

‘I….thanks,’ Beau muttered. A pause. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she admitted. ‘Not just being here, dealing with all of this...There’s a four-year-old kid, and I’m the only person in the world he’s got left. I can’t leave him here, but I don’t...I don’t want to stay.’ Now that the paperwork had come to light; that the winery was, technically hers, that the house was half hers, that Frederick needed someone to take care of him, it felt like she had been chained to the place that had brought her such misery and pain.

 

Yasha’s large fingers  started brushing through her hair . Beau had never been one for displays of affection, but she had to admit that it was an incredibly comforting gesture.  Even more so when Yasha started separating Beau’s hair into strands,  and began to braid it.

 

‘It’s not just _them_ ,’ Beau said. ‘Not just what they did. I—’ She paused. If she opened this can of worms, then there was no way she could ever put it back in. That was the problem with being slightly drunk. You did things you regretted. Still, if there was anyone that she was going to say it to, the only person she _could_ say it to would have been Yasha. ‘I just keep thinking back to that night that I lost Tori.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t that she was the first person I ever loved. It was that she was the first person that ever loved _me_. And I left her behind.’ Yasha’s hands faltered almost imperceptibly.

 

‘Sorry,’ Beau said. She knew that her words had reminded Yasha of her late wife. ‘I know you don’t want to be thinking about Zuala right now.’

 

‘No, it’s okay.’ Yasha said. ‘It’s good for me to talk about her; to think about her. It helps me think that maybe one day I can...move on.’

 

Beau couldn’t let herself hope that the words meant what she thought they might have meant. The memory of her rebuffed kiss was still at the forefront of her mind.

 

‘Did you…’ Beau hesitated. ‘Did you do this for her? Braid her hair?’ she clarified, after a moment or two’s silence.’

 

‘Yes,’ Yasha said. ‘Her hair was much longer, though, so sometimes we would spend hours lying under the shade of an old tree, just...appreciating each others’ company.’

 

‘I thought you didn’t have many plants in the Moorlands?’ Beau asked, confused.

 

‘Well, it was a rock shaped like a tree,’ Yasha admitted. ‘But we called it an old tree. You should have some more water,’ Yasha said.

 

‘Nah, I think I’m sobering up okay.’ Regardless, Yasha poured a glass, and insisted that she drink it.

 

‘You will have a headache in the morning if you don’t.’

 

Beau snorted slightly. She was going to have a headache anyway. Nevermind the fact that she had bared her heart and soul to the woman she was fairly sure didn’t have the same feeling she did.

 

Still, it was in Yasha’s gentle embrace that Beau finally managed to find sleep.


	8. Chapter Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funnily enough, I know nothing about either running a winery, or stealing from it, so take that as you will.

Chapter Eight

 

_Six Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Stealing the wine turned out to be the easy part.

 

The hard part was covering up her tracks.

 

It was easy enough to get one of the distributors on her side, give him ten percent of the profits, letting him think it was forty. He didn’t know what the wine was worth, after all.

 

Then, she had to keep track of exactly what she’d sold to under-the-table buyers, and make sure it was never reflected in the ledgers. One less barrel here, some numbers shifted around there. She didn’t dare take too much – if the money stopped coming in, then her father would definitely start asking questions.

 

It was enough, though, that one day she’d be able to track down Tori, and pay whatever bail she needed to, so that they could be together again.

 

Through hopefully surreptitious questionings, Beau learned that Tori had been taken to a prison in Deastock. Three years for trafficking suude, while Beau got away with a literal slap on the wrist. She couldn’t help but feel guilty about it.

 

Even still, though she hated to admit it, Beau found that after a while, she thought about Tori less and less. At first it was like a constant ache in her stomach (though admittedly, that might have been the broken ribs). She thought about Tori, dreamed about Tori, planned about exactly how she was going to get Tori out. 

 

Now, her mind was consumed by the thoughts of the look on her father’s face when he realized that she’d been stealing right from under his nose.

 

This was going to be amazing.

 

…

 

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Yasha woke with a slight pain in her back, and a heavy weight in her lap.

 

She was used to sleeping in strange positions, and quite frankly, often preferred sleeping on the ground to sleeping on a bed. This was the first time since Zuala died that she had woken up with the head of a beautiful woman in her lap.

 

Beau looked calm, and peaceful, and somehow smaller than she did while awake. As short as she was, Beau often held herself in such a way that made her seem taller. Since they’d arrived here, she had shrunk in on herself, as though trying to curl into a ball, to make herself a smaller target.

 

An errant strand of hair that hadn’t quite made it into the braid was pressed across her eyes. Yasha brushed it away. Part of her wanted to freeze this moment, knowing that the moment that Beau woke, the pain of the past weeks would hit her once more. Yasha was content, then, to let her sleep for a little while longer.

 

Half an hour or so later, there was a knock on the door, and before Yasha could even say anything, Jester had burst in. ‘Yasha, have you seen Beau—’ she started to say, before seeing the two of them on the floor. ‘Oh,’ she said, in a voice that suggested that she had completely misinterpreted the situation. ‘I can leave you guys alone. I just wanted to make sure that Beau was okay, because she wasn’t in her bed.’

 

As if she had heard Jester saying her name, Beau started to stir. Eyes still closed, she frowned, as though trying to figure out why her pillow was so lumpy. Then, her eyes opened, and there was a momentary horror in them.

 

‘Morning,’ Yasha said. She couldn’t help but grin, but, seeing that the horrified look on Beau’s face persisted, she decided to change to something a little more reassuring, with a little less teeth. Beau made to sit up, and seemed to change her mind almost immediately.

 

‘Oh, fuck,’ she said, holding her head. Jester ran to their side immediately.

 

‘Are you okay? Do you need me to give you a _Cure Wounds_?’

 

‘Nah, I’m good,’ Beau groaned. ‘Just a hangover.’

 

‘Oh, I have something for that, too,’ Jester said, and put her hands on Beau’s shoulders. There was a flash of purple light and Beau suddenly looked a lot brighter.

 

‘Shit,’ she said, clearly a little stunned. ‘Thanks Jester. Clearly I need to get you to do that every time I get wasted.’

 

‘You got drunk last night?’ Jester asked, and Beau winced slightly. 

 

‘We snuck out for ale,’ Yasha said, before he could stop herself. Beau gave her an appreciative look. ‘Sorry.’

 

Jester’s demeanor changed entirely; going from one of unbridled concern, to annoyance that she had not been inviting to their fake drinking session. ‘You should have told me, I would have come with you,’ she said. A pause. ‘Unless you guys wanted...Oh my god, was it a  _date_ ?’ Yasha was the one to wince, that time. This wasn’t how the conversation was supposed to go.

 

‘Y’know, I think I’m gonna go grab some breakfast,’ Beau said, jumping to her feet. She left the room without a backwards glance.

 

‘Did I say something wrong?’ Jester asked, confused. Yasha couldn’t blame her. She didn’t know, after all, what had happened between Yasha and Beau on the hilltop just days ago.

 

_Things are a little weird between us right now_ , Yasha wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead, she gave an awkward sort of shrug, and let Jester believe that it was her who had caused Beau’s pain.

 

_Coward._

 

…

 

Beau picked at her bacon; the  _Greater Restoration_ that Jester had cast hadn’t quite gotten rid of the nausea. At the very least, she wouldn’t be spending the morning hunched over the toilet bowl.

 

Jester leaned over, and said in a stage whisper, ‘Your hair looks really pretty, Beau.’ Frowning, Beau put a hand to the back of her head, where her hair was braided. She had a vague recollection of Yasha doing it the previous night. Or morning, rather, after Beau had literally fallen through the window, absolutely trashed, at three a.m.

 

‘She _likes_ you,’ Jester said, in a conspiratorial sort of voice. Beau stared at her, feeling her dark skin flush red.

 

‘You’re crazy.’ Beau shook her head. ‘Yasha has way too much common sense to fall in love with someone like me.’ She cautioned a glance to the other end of the table, where Yasha was sitting with Nott, the two of them still apparently flabbergasted by the quality of the silverware.

 

‘Beau, I am an expert in these things,’ Jester said, knowingly. ‘Yasha is clearly in love with you. Like when Oskar tells Guinevere he can’t be with her, because—’ She stopped, suddenly, as Fjord arrived.

 

‘If she was in love with me, she’d say it,’ Beau said, still frowning. Yasha had made her feelings pretty clear.

 

‘Not everyone is as direct as you are, Beau,’ Jester told her. ‘They don’t just blurt out their feelings.’

 

 _I mean,_ Beau thought. _I haven’t exactly blurted out my feelings_. But then, she thought about the outrageous (if terrible) flirting that she had laid on Yasha when they’d first met, about her failed attempt at taking things further. That was pretty fucking direct.

 

After breakfast, Beau pulled the group together, to have the conversation that she really didn’t want to have.

 

‘So,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna need to stay here a little longer than I first thought.’

 

‘You have your brother to look after,’ Fjord said, and Beau winced. Yeah, she’d almost forgotten about that part.

 

‘It’s a little more than that,’ she admitted, and she told them about almost everything else. About how the parents who she thought had never loved her had decided to give her one last kick in the face. She didn’t tell them about the other things they’d discussed in the meeting. About the Winery losing money, and about Frederick.

 

‘ _Holy_ shit, Beau, that’s a _lot_ of money,’ Jester said. Beau brushed off the comment. It wasn’t about the money. She didn’t give a shit about the money. It was about her parents and their apparent inability to let her move on with her life even now that they were dead.

 

She shrugged. ‘More than they ever gave me when I was alive, at least.’

 

‘Forgive me for saying this,’ Caleb said, shrewdly. ‘But is there a chance those Wills could have been forged?’

 

‘I dunno,’ Beau shrugged. She’d been considering that point herself. ‘It’s possible, I guess. The lawyer guy – Devos – says he was there when they were written, but he could be lying. I don’t know what his interest would be in making sure I get the business.’

 

Actually, she did know. Or it least, it came to her, all of a sudden. If the Winery went to Frederick, then it would be overseen by the trustee, who would have a vested interest in making sure things ran smoothly. If it went to the fuck-up daughter who spent all of her time outside of Kamordah, then if someone was doing something they shouldn’t be doing, she wouldn’t be any the wiser. 

 

Just another thing that she’d have to look into.

 

‘So, I mean...you guys can go if you want to,’ she said _. But…_ said the tiny voice in the back of her head. _But..._ She sighed. Things would be way easier if they stayed. ‘I have a favor to ask. I mean, it’s probably a stupid idea, but hear me out.’

 

‘We’re listening,’ Jester said, excitedly.

 

‘Okay,’ Beau sighed again. ‘Do you guys want to help run a Winery for a few months?’ 

 

Beau didn’t think that they would say yes. Hence why she’d buried the “we may need to uncover some shady business” lede. Use that to draw them in  if she needed to . To her surprise, though, they all said yes almost immediately.

 

‘Work in a place that _makes_ alcohol?’ Nott said, excitedly. ‘Hell, yes.’

 

‘We were pirates for Fjord,’ Jester told Beau. ‘The least we can do is help you make some wine.’

 

_It’s not for me,_ Beau wanted to say. Then she realized that it kind of was for her. Even if it was just to assuage her curiosity, it was still for her.

 

‘Oh, yeah,’ Beau said, as though she was only just remembering it. ‘And there may also be some dodgy dealings going on that we need to uncover.’

 

Predictably, Nott and Jester were  _thrilled_ . ‘The Best Detectives!’ Jester said, triumphantly. ‘Back on the case.’

 

Caduceus looked at her curiously, as if he thought she was holding something back. When she gave him a look that was possibly almost a glare, he smiled at her serenely.

 

This was going to be interesting.

...

 

As they all left the parlor, Caleb pulled Beau aside. She had been expecting this; her friends clearly knew her well enough to figure out that she would shut down entirely if they tried to comfort her as a group, so they’d been taking turns doing it individually. 

 

‘I’m sorry if I am overstepping,’ he said, though Beau knew that was a lie. Caleb had no qualms in overstepping when it suited his purposes. ‘But I do not particularly get the impression that you want to stay here, let alone for a few more months.’

 

Beau shrugged. He wasn’t entirely wrong. ‘I don’t,’ she told him. ‘I don’t even want to stay here for a few more seconds. But I have someone else that I need to think about now.’

 

When she’d told them about the Wills, she had decided not to mention the other part of the meeting with Devos, about Frederick needing a guardian. She assumed that they probably would have put that together, in the sort of way that she hadn’t. Because you couldn’t just keep a household of servants and tutors and nannies around just to look after one kid.

 

If he was anything like her (gods, that thought terrified her), then he didn’t have any ties to Kamordah that weren’t already lying in the ground. She didn’t get the impression he had any friends his own age, that the only people he spent any considerable amount of time with were Amelia, and his tutor.

 

It was a fucking depressing thought. No wonder he was so quiet.  If it came down to it, though, Beau thought she would have to take him away from here, away from all the shitty memories, and the shitty house, with its too big hallways.

 

She supposed, though he brain hadn’t gotten that far yet, that it would mean selling the house, and selling the winery, and she felt a little more upset about that than she should have. Still, you couldn’t sell something that was losing money, and she would have to do something about that first. So Beau made her excuses to Caleb, and made her way to her father’s study.

 

She knew all the tricks for forging ledgers; she had done it herself for so long, after all. Sales that never happened with money that never came in. Purchase orders that were never fulfilled...She’d made a pretty good profit of her own before her father had caught on.

 

Shit, maybe there was a reason he’d hated her.

 

Frederick, after all, had probably never been caught with his pants around his ankles, seducing the daughter of the priest of Erathis. Considering he was all of four years old, that was no bad thing.

 

The study was neat, and tidy, not a thing out of place. Just like Beau remembered it. Once, she had nearly gotten a hiding for forgetting to put the ledger away one night after balancing the books. The key was where it had always been; in a hidden compartment underneath the desk.

 

Beau pulled it out, and in one brief moment, her heart skipped a beat.

 

There was a neatly folded letter sitting on top of the ledger. Written in very neat, very precise handwriting was the name “Beauregard.”

 

Beau grabbed for the letter, and then stopped.  She didn’t know if she wanted to read it.  Whatever she read in this letter would be the last words her father would ever give to her. She wasn’t sure if she wanted that burden. Whether they were good, or bad, she wouldn’t know until she unfolded it, and read it.

 

Of course, she could give it to someone else – to Fjord, or to Caleb, maybe – to read first. To let her know whether or not it was worth her reading it. But then, their response would be an answer in and of itself.

 

She put it back in the drawer. Maybe she would read it later.  She opened the latest ledger, the one with the open-ended date, and began to read.

 

She read through for half an hour, or so, before snapping it shut.

 

 

It was neat. Everything added up. Everything was perfect.

 

And that was what made Beau certain that something was wrong.

 

People were...well, human. Or halfling. Whatever. They made mistakes, they accidentally wrote one entry twice, and had to cross the second one out. They wrote “5” instead of “6” and had to fix it without looking like there was a mistake in the first place.

 

This ledger was perfect. Whoever had written it hadn’t made a single mistake in their writing, or their transcription, or, she was sure, the accounting.  It was too neat.

 

The purchase orders, too, were perfect. Not once had anyone ordered too many corks, or not enough bottles. Some wineries made their own bottles, but Beau knew that the Lionett Wineries used a glassblower somewhere in Deastock for all their bottles. Or at least they had when she’d last been here. A lot could have changed in five years.  But she doubted that it had. More likely was that this was the paperwork that had been given to her father to hide the theft. Unless he was the one that was stealing the wine. Beau didn’t know how she’d feel about that.

 

Grabbing the latest stack of paperwork, Beau went off in search of her friends. Or, one friend in particular.

 

She found Caleb in the library, as she’d known she would.  He had wandered off in that direction after their conversation outside the parlor.  That was how he had spent much of his time here so far, reading his way through the family’s book collection. It was a pretty decent collection, and one of the few things that Beau didn’t entirely hate about the house. On the days that she hadn’t been able to sneak out, she had instead snuck downstairs to read history books.

 

There weren’t many books on Dunamancy, but Caleb seemed happy enough reading about the Calamity.

 

‘Yo, Caleb,’ Beau said. ‘You’re really smart, right?’ Not the most polite of greetings, but she didn’t want to beat around the bush.

 

‘ _Ja_ ,’ Caleb said, frowning. He put down the book that he was reading, clearly concerned that this was a trick question.

 

‘Do you think you could help me go over some ledgers?’

 

The frown deepened. ‘I do not believe that my intelligence will help you there,  _meine freund._ I have no experience in that sort of thing. Perhaps Nott might be able to help.’

 

Beau considered the point. Nott had helped her husband run the Apothecary. She would probably have some sort of experience. It didn’t necessarily need to be an expert opinion. Just a second set of eyes.

 

‘Good idea, man. I’ll go find her.’

 

Nott was a little harder to find. Eventually, Beau found her in the cellar, staring wistfully at the thousand or so bottles of wine lying in neat rows. Beau hesitated at the door. She bit her lip.

 

‘Beau, is that you?’ came Nott’s voice, from in amongst the rows of shelves. ‘Holy shit, you have so much booze.’

 

‘You can’t drink any of it,’ Beau said, warningly, from the doorway. Though, admittedly, it wasn’t as though they were going into battle. At least, she hoped they weren’t.

 

‘It’s alright,’ Nott said, ‘I still have the flask.’ As if to demonstrate, she took a long swig from the flask. ‘You want some?’

 

Beau frowned slightly. It was eleven a.m. But, it would make some things a little easier. ‘Sure,’ she said, holding out her hand.

 

‘You’ll have to come and get it,’ Nott said. ‘I’m busy staring at wine.’

 

Beau took a deep breath, and, fist clenched, she stepped over the threshold. She had to remind herself that nothing here could hurt her anymore. She made her way to Nott’s side, and took the proffered flask. The cheap booze burned on the way down her throat, but it calmed her nerves a little, which, she supposed, was exactly why Nott liked it so much.

 

‘You helped Yeza run the Apothecary, right?’ she asked. Nott, still enthralled by the bottles, didn’t answer straight away.

 

‘Yeah, sure,’ Nott said, not tearing her eyes away from the shelves.

 

‘You ever do the ledgers?’

 

‘Yeza was never very good with numbers,’ Nott said, which Beau took as a “yes.”

 

‘I don’t know if it’s just me,’ Beau said, showing her friend the thick, leather-bound book under her arm. ‘But I feel like these numbers don’t quite add up. You think you could help me?’

 

Nott frowned. ‘I’d have to take a look,’ she said. ‘But from what I’ve heard, you’re probably better at this than I am. Isn’t forging ledgers exactly how you stole wine?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau said. ‘That’s what worries me. If whoever did this got the idea from me doing it in the first place.’ She didn’t think she’d be able to forgive herself if her brother’s livelihood was ruined because of her own careless childhood actions.

 

‘Can I—’ Nott started, gesturing towards the shelf. ‘Not to drink – just to look at.’

 

‘Go for it,’ Beau told her. She realized, all of a sudden, that all of these bottles were technically hers. Well, the winery was hers, so by extension, the bottles – and the cellar – were too. She shuddered.

 

‘Do these bottles go for sale?’ Nott asked, looking one over. Beau couldn’t quite tell what she was looking at.

 

‘Most of them, I think,’ Beau said. ‘Why?’

 

Nott shrugged. ‘Seem a little light is all. Not by a lot.’ Beau took another look. Nott was right. It was light, but by the slightest amount. Maybe an ounce.

 

Beau considered the point. ‘If you were going to steal a lot of booze,’ she said, ‘how would you do it?’

 

‘Oh, easy,’ Nott said, and Beau knew instantly that the goblin had been considering this idea for a long time. ‘Go invisible, steal one bottle at a time. Over a long while, it’ll add up to a lot.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau said. ‘It would. Say you were filling wine bottles, and maybe only filled it ninety five percent of the way up. Fill levels vary enough that most customers won’t notice, but you do that to twenty bottles, then you’ve got yourself a free bottle of wine.’

 

‘Seems like a lot of work for one bottle of wine,’ Nott commented.

 

‘Sure,’ Beau agreed. ‘But when you’re looking at selling ten thousand bottles of wine a year, that’s five hundred bottles.’ She grimaced. ‘Man, I should have done it this way. This is pretty clever. The only person losing out is the customer.’ An exasperating thought struck her. She sighed. Fucking again. ‘Which means whoever is doing this, this isn’t the only way they’re swindling. I gotta say, that’s pretty bold.’

 

‘Maybe your parents caught on,’ Nott suggested. ‘Maybe that’s why they got killed.’ Beau’s head shot up. She hadn’t even _considered_ that.

 

‘Alright, Nott,’ Beau said, clapping her friend on the shoulder. ‘It’s time to start rattling some cages.’

 


	9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

 

_Five Years Ago_

 

_Kamordah_

 

Beau’s scheme with the wine lasted six months before her father caught on.

 

Admittedly, it was five months longer than she’d planned for; it was not a scheme that had been designed for long-term swindling, and Beau saw it more as a testament to her father’s indifference that he took so long to notice.

 

If he had been angry after finding out about the suude, this time he was apoplectic. He didn’t even have the composure to put a single sentence together. Somehow, though, he found the wherewithal to beat her within an inch of her life.

 

Fucking worth it.

 

She was let out of the cellar with a swollen face, and bruised ribs after about twelve hours, by a mother with pursed lips. Her mother wasn’t particularly happy about what Beau had done – had _ever_ done – but unlike her father, she had never taken it to blows. Which, Beau supposed, was small favors. That didn’t stop the snide comments about how none of her friends had daughters that gave them this much trouble, how they did their cross-stitch practice, and their piano lessons, and dance lessons like good little girls.

 

Never mind that Beau was nineteen fucking years old, and was still sometimes treated like she was a baby.

 

‘Go to your room,’ her mother said, sniffing snidely. ‘And don’t even think about coming out until you’re told to.’ Beau would have rolled her eyes, but she could barely even see out of them. As if she had anywhere else to go.

 

She could about guess what would happen now. Her father would interrogate her on the whereabouts of all the money she’d made, would keep hitting her until she decided to give him an answer.

 

Only that wasn’t how it went.

 

It went with Beau being locked in her room for another sixteen hours or so, and called down to the living room at ten o’clock on a Yulisen night.

 

Both of her parents were waiting there, sitting stiffly in oddly formal clothes. ‘What’s going on?’ Beau asked, immediately. Before she’d even _seen_ the half a dozen black-clad figures, standing around the room. Unconsciously, Beau felt her fists clench.

 

‘Beauregard,’ her father said. He couldn’t even be bothered looking her in the eye. ‘These people are from the Archive of the Cobalt Soul. They’re here to take you away.’

 

‘Like fuck they are,’ Beau said, immediately. She didn’t know what the Archive of the Cobalt Soul was, but if her father wanted to send her there, then it couldn’t have been anything good.

 

‘So you are a fighter, then?’ said one of the black clad figures. He was about a foot taller than Beau, with closely-cropped dark hair.

 

‘If I have to be, yeah,’ said Beau, who had never won a fist fight in her life. She’d gotten caught up in a few bar scraps; par for the course, when you spent your time in the _Cliff’s Keep_ , but nothing she’d been able to walk away proud from.

 

She didn’t get a single hit in on the figures in black before they knocked her to the ground, stunned. _Six against one_ , she thought to herself. _Not very fair._

 

One way or the other, it looked like she was finally getting her wish of leaving Kamordah.

 

With any luck, she'd never have to go back again.

 

…

 

_Present Day_

 

_Kamordah_

 

 

The Lionett Winery was a little way down from the house, and Beau had done her best to avoid it in the days that she’d been here. She’d had a couple of cursory, obligatory meetings with Leland, if only to confirm that things were running smoothly, and that was about it. Clearly, things  _weren’t_ running smoothly. Not that Leland had mentioned it. Either it meant he was in on it, or that he didn’t trust her to be able to do anything about it.

 

As much as she hated to admit it, Beau suspected the latter. Leland had never particularly been enthusiastic about a teenage girl helping to run things, less so after it turned out she’d stolen thousands of gold worth of wine from them. Beau could see how that might give someone a bad impression.

 

Still, she was a new person. Had turned a leaf, or whatever. The worst crime she committed these days was mail theft. Plus, she supposed, treason, but that was more a consequences of trying to do good, rather than an intentional act of evil.

 

Beau didn’t particularly _want_ to go down to the winery. She would have preferred going to her brother’s room, and helping him build a castle out of empty cans, or whatever it was that kids did for fun. Though she knew she had to, she wasn’t particularly interested in doing any of the boring adult stuff that had been forced upon her. The one things she _did_ like was finding out answers about things, so she’d decided to focus on that.

 

They found Leland in the office of the winery; a large room with two paperwork laden desks, overlooking the aging room. One of the desk was Leland’s and one was her father’s. Beau felt a sick sort of feeling in the pit of her stomach. Technically, she supposed, it was hers now.

 

Ugh. How did she end up the sort of person that had a _desk_?

 

‘Miss Beauregard,’ he greeted her, with false warmth. Beau had always hated Leland. Even now, she suspected he had something to do with her getting caught, originally. ‘And, uh...friends.’

 

‘These are our new…sommaliers,’ Beau said, blankly. ‘I’m giving them the tour.’ Leland stared at her, nervously. 

 

‘Can we really afford—’

 

‘They’re working on a volunteer basis,’ Beau told him, her voice flat. 

 

‘Hey—’ Nott started. Fjord jabbed an elbow in her direction, which missed entirely. Leland narrowed his eyes. He very clearly knew that she was lying, and had almost definitely seen her friends at the funeral. She didn’t expect him to believe her, nor did she care if he didn’t. Whether or not _he_ cared she was bringing in outside help to figure out what was going on, well, time would tell.

 

‘The winery can’t pay you,’ Beau admitted, after Leland left, in a little bit of a huff. ‘But I still have a bit of my own gold—’

 

‘Don’t listen to Nott,’ Fjord said, eying the goblin. ‘We don’t need money.’

 

‘You know what a sommalier is?’ Beau asked Nott, half-grinning.

 

‘No.’ Nott shook her head.

 

‘Wine taster.’ Nott brightened immediately, and Jester shot Beau an annoyed sort of look. Okay, so over the past few months, they had all been trying to get not to curtail a bit on the drinking, but sometimes circumstance required it.

 

While Nott, Yasha and Beau  checked out the winery proper, the rest of the group went to talk to the workers in the wineyard.  Beau decided that she would look through the paperwork in the office on her own, later.

 

Being winter, they had something of a skeleton staff. Half a dozen or so halflings were loading crates with bottles, each bearing the yellow label of the Lionett Winery. Beau went to examine one. Like the ones in the cellar of the house, they were a shade light.  How had Leland missed this?

 

In the corner of the cellar, a record was playing. 

 

Beau paused. The song was familiar, and sent a wave of memory through her mind. Things that she thought she had forgotten. Like being forced to learn how to dance; having some unfamiliar man’s arm wrapped around her waist. She shuddered. She had always hated being led like that. Would have much preferred doing the man’s part. Though, she thought, if they were someone else’s arms...

 

‘ _Hey, teenage delinquent_!’ a voice speaking Halfling called out, and Beau’s head shot up. She knew that voice. Beside her, Nott snorted.

 

‘Holy shit, Maris?’ The small, grey-haired figure had wrapped their arms around her waist before she could so much as protest. ‘I thought you’d be dead by now.’ Beau had switched to Common, for the benefit of Yasha, who didn’t know a word of Halfling.

 

‘I thought _you’d_ be in prison,’ Maris countered, grinning. Her face had a fair few more wrinkles than the last time Beau had seen it.

 

‘Nah,’ Beau grinned. ‘Too good for prison, I spent a few years in a monastery instead.’ She gestured to the vestments, and the abs.

 

‘It’s a good look on you,’ Maris said. She was, for lack of a better word, the boss down here. She supervised the loading of the crates, and made sure that none of the other workers – all Halflings – were slacking off.

 

‘Didn’t see you at the funeral,’ Beau commented, and Maris snorted.

 

‘You think they’d let us plebs have a day off just for that?’ She shrugged. ‘Plus, you know...’

 

Yeah, Beau knew. Her father hadn’t exactly been the best boss around. ‘Well, I guess I better try and do something about that,’ she said. ‘What do they have you on?’

 

‘Two silver a day,’ Maris told her. ‘The rest are only on one.’

 

Fuck, that was stupid, Beau thought. But, she couldn’t go ahead and start raising the wages, until she knew exactly how much wine was being siphoned off. At the very least, she could talk to Leland about it. Two silver a day for someone that had been working there over a decade was daylight fucking robbery.

 

‘You see any funny business happening around?’ Beau asked, slipping Maris a handful of gold pieces. Maris stared at her. 

 

‘You sure you haven’t been off committing crime again?’

 

Beau barked a laugh. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Funnily enough, there are plenty of people out there that’ll pay you to go and do dangerous shit for them.’

 

Maris smiled. ‘No funny business. Not down here. Not since you left.’ It wasn’t intended as a barb, and Beau didn’t take it as one. She had always liked Maris; a good, honest worker in a town that had far too few of them. 

 

A bell rang in the distance somewhere, and all the workers dropped whatever it was that they were doing. Lunchtime. 

 

Maris gave Beau a nod of thanks, pocketing the gold. Then, she joined the rest of the Halflings heading back upstairs.

 

Beau looked around, feeling something akin to nostalgia. She had spent a decent amount of time here, hanging out with the workers, until she’d gotten old enough to sneak into town. After that, her visits to the winery proper were fewer and fewer, unless she was working.

 

‘I’m going to snoop around,’ Nott said, and Beau didn’t move to stop her. That was sort of the whole reason they were down there. It wasn’t even really snooping. Beau, however, was sort of focused on Yasha, who seemed to be listening intently to the still playing record.

 

‘Having fun?’ Beau asked, an eyebrow raised in amusement.

 

‘We didn’t have much music in Xhorhas,’ Yasha admitted, in her soft but eager sort of voice. ‘Not this kind of music, anyway. This is nice.’

 

‘I can show you the dance that goes with it,’ Beau said, before she could stop herself. She grimaced. Somehow, though, the bad memory that accompanied the music seemed to fade slightly at Yasha’s words.

 

‘There’s a dance?’ Yasha asked, and if Beau wasn’t mistake, the tone in the aasimar’s voice was one of delight.

 

‘Yeah, come here,’ Beau said. ‘Put your left hand above my waist.’ She expected Yasha to hesitate, to pull back and say that she didn’t want to do it. To her surprise, though, Yasha stepped forward slowly, and put her hand at Beau’s hip.

 

‘Here?’

 

‘A little higher,’ Beau said, trying not to think about how close Yasha’s hand was to her ass. ‘Right arm around my shoulder.’ She waited for the music to catch up. ‘Okay, now step forward with your left foot.’ As Yasha moved forward with her left foot, Beau stepped back with her right. What came next? _Shit_. This was so much easier to do than explain. It was easier, she decided, to make it up. Step back whenever Yasha stepped forward. They muddled through something that vaguely resembled a Foxtrot. 

 

Taking a chance, as they came to a stop, and sat down on a couple of barrels, Beau rested her head against Yasha’s shoulder.

 

‘Are you alright?’ Yasha asked, nervously.

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau gave a sad smile. ‘Still just...being here, you know. But it’s weird. With you guys here, every day feels a little easier. Like I’m replacing all of those bad memories with better ones.’

 

Yasha seemed thoughtful, for a moment. ‘In Xhorhas, we had a saying,’ she told Beau. ‘“A river never flows the same way twice.”’ She frowned. ‘We didn’t have any rivers, so I don’t know where that came from. It means that you can come back to a place and see it differently than you did the first time.’

 

‘Different as in better?’

 

‘Not necessarily,’ Yasha shrugged. ‘I guess...You just see things that you didn’t see the first time. Some good, some bad. I don’t know, I didn’t really understand it when the Lightcaller tried to explain it. I just thought it might make you feel better.’ 

 

Beau squeezed her hand, feeling a rush of warmth in her chest. She didn’t know if Yasha’s words had helped, but the fact that Yasha had  _tried_ to help meant far more than any words could.

 

‘If it’s okay with you, I would like to uh...’ Yasha hesitated. ‘Give you a better memory.’

 

Beau’s smile turned a little happier. ‘Sure,’ she said. Any memory involving Yasha was a happy one. She was not even close to expecting it, though, when Yasha leaned over to kiss Beau slowly on the lips. The first three seconds or so of it, Beau was so stunned that she didn’t move, but then she got into it, pulling Yasha closer to her,  holding her body tighter, until…

 

Beau pulled away slightly.

 

‘Is everything okay?’ Yasha asked, concerned. ‘Was that alright?’

 

‘Yeah.’ Beau let out a tiny gasp. ‘I just needed to breathe.’

 

‘I felt so bad, for pushing you away before, when all I wanted to do was pull you closer,’ Yasha admitted. Beau couldn’t quite help the soar of ecstatic disbelief that came at those words.

 

‘Seriously?’ she asked, still not quite willing to let herself accept that she wasn’t dreaming this.

 

Y asha took her hand, and kissed it. ‘Of course.’

 

There was a moment of quiet. Then, came Nott’s voice. ‘Are you guys gonna fuck, or can I turn visible again?’

 

_Shit_ . Beau had completely fucking forgotten about Nott. Judging by the look on Yasha’s face, she had, too.

 

Beau bit her lip, frustrated. ‘You can turn visible,’ she said. Even if it was something they were ready to do, she didn’t particularly want to do it here.

 

She squeezed Yasha’s hand  again . For a brief moment, she felt like everything was going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you want some smut, I guess.
> 
> Since it seems to be the thing to do, go see my boring tumblr: @thefriendlymurderer


	10. Chapter Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some canon-typical violence in this chapter.

Chapter Ten

 

It was pissing down rain. For days upon days upon days, it hadn’t stopped raining. It rained, then it had rained some more. It had rained so much, that Beau had run out of words to describe just how much it was raining.

 

Given the time of year, and how fucking cold it was, the grapes would survive the endless downpour. If it had been spring, or summer, it could end up in a mold, but right now it was unlikely. Even still, Beau made a mental note to tell Leland to tell the growers to keep an eye on things, but she imagined he already had it well enough in hand.

 

Instead, she spent the day stalking the hallways of the house, her mood as dark as the clouds outside. Their “investigation,” for lack of a better word, had ground to a halt in the wake of the weather; all of the workers were too busy trying to keep things dry to be answering any of her penetrating questions.

 

Things had plateaued slightly, between Beau and Yasha, since their kiss in the winery. Though Beau wanted to try and move things forward, she had no idea how, and she was pretty sure Yasha didn’t either. Both of their last relationships had ended kinda disastrously. They had shared a few chaste, carefully negotiated kisses in between periods of nothingness. Once or twice, Beau thought about letting her hands linger to Yasha’s back, to start undoing her belt.

 

Finally, after getting fed up with the way she kept retreating back into her own mind, Beau decided to start clearing out the house. It was no small task, but it was one that she knew would have to be completed eventually. She’d had another painstaking discussion with Devos, the lawyer, and decided that really, the only way to move forward would be to sell the house, and by extension the winery. It might have been Frederick’s home, but the house was way too big for just him, and there was no way in hell that Beau was going to stay here.

 

If she had to take him – and that was looking a more and more likely scenario (more scarily, Beau was finding the idea more and more appealing) – they would leave this place, and go to Zadash, or Nicodranas, or Alfield. Anywhere but fucking Kamordah.

 

Luc and Yeza were in Nicodranas, as far as she remembered, as was Jester’s mother. It was a beautiful city, and Beau could definitely imagine worse places to live. ‘Do you like the ocean?’ she asked Frederick one day, after she’d gotten sick of sorting shit out. They were in the library together, reading about dragons. The books, Beau thought, they would definitely keep.

 

Frederick shrugged, in the sort of way that suggested he didn’t understand the question. ‘He’s never been,’ Amelia told her, in a low sort of whisper. Beau didn’t want to think what implications were hidden behind that whisper.

 

‘It’s amazing,’ Beau told him, earnestly. ‘I can take you to see it, soon.’ Frederick’s eyes, widened, and Beau briefly considered telling him about the time that they’d been pirates, before deciding against it. That was probably a conversation for five, rather than four.

 

In the afternoon, grumbling and groaning, Beau went back to the culling. She had refused to let any of her friends help her with the task, and she didn’t not miss the way some of them (cough! Fjord) seemed a little concerned at how freely she was disposing of what could have been family heirlooms.

 

 

If they had wanted their shit kept in the family, Beau reasoned, then they sure as fuck wouldn’t have put her in their wills. Even still, Frederick’s trustee had to oversee the entire process, in case she threw away anything that might have been of value. They ended up with three piles; keep, throw away, and sell. Beau had really, really wanted the second pile to be the biggest, but the trustee kept moving things from the second to the third. Beau had to bite her tongue against the wave of insults that kept rising in her throat. She supposed, after her anger abated, that it was a good thing. That this trustee seemed to have Frederick’s best interests at heart.

 

‘Some of these things look like they’d been in the family for a while,’ Fjord said, as Beau chucked an old cabinet into the “throw away” room. There was so many _things_ in the godsdamned places, that she had to use rooms instead of piles now.

 

‘Yeah, well, I don’t care,’ Beau said, fuming a little. She could tell that Fjord meant well, but his overwhelming desire to know anything of his biological family had clouded his judgment when it came to people that didn’t give a shit about most of their blood.

 

It had come to a head the previous day, when Beau had mentioned – offhand – the letter that her father had sent her while she’d been at the Cobalt Soul.

 

‘Tell me if this is an inappropriate question,’ Fjord said, ‘But can I, uh...can I read that letter?’

 

The letter, that they had sent her, that she had read a thousand times trying to discern some hidden meaning. Beau sighed. What could it hurt if Fjord read the letter? If he noticed how crumpled it was, that it had once been rolled tight, but had been laid flat and read and reread, and thrown away and picked up again…he didn’t say anything.

 

Beau had read it enough now that she damn near had it memorized. It started the way most letters from parents seemed to start: “your mother had a son (oh, actually, she had him three years ago), surprise!”

 

It ended with, “we hope you will be able to provide an improved legacy at that time,” which was the kindest way she’d ever been told to fuck off.

 

Fjord read through the letter. Then, he read through it again, the furrow in his dark green brow creasing. ‘Beau,’ he said, finally. Beau started. He was using his “trying to be gentle” voice. ‘I don’t think this was them trying to disown you.’

 

‘What?’ she demanded.

 

He sounded almost apologetic, now. ‘I think he was just telling you to come back when you’ve got your shit together.’ He paused. ‘Granted, he said it in a pretty passive-aggressive way.’ There was a moment, during which neither of them said anything. Finally, Beau snatched the letter from his grip.

 

‘Fuck off, Fjord,’ Beau muttered, and she’d refused to talk to him since then. So his suggestions that some of the things in the house might have sentimental value weren’t exactly welcome.

 

She thought vaguely about the other letter, the unopened one in her father’s study, that she simultaneously wanted to read, but also really, really didn’t want to read. In the end – sick of going into the study, and staring at it – she gave the letter to Caduceus, knowing that he wouldn’t read it, and, if she was lucky, might even accidentally lose it.

 

‘You would be better to destroy it,’ Caleb told her one morning at breakfast, and she stared at him. She hadn’t realized that he’d been paying such close attention. But then, she hadn’t made too much of a secret of the way she would sometimes pull it out, and stare at it, undecided, for minutes on end.

 

Beau considered denial, but what she really wanted was guidance. ‘I’m just worried,’ she said, choosing her words carefully. ‘What if it’s them apologizing for all the shit they ever did to me? Admitting that they were terrible parents, and that I’m not a fuck-up after all.’

 

Caleb frowned. ‘You remember,’ he said, then looked around suddenly, as if to make sure they weren’t being overhead. Even still, he lowered his voice considerably. ‘You remember that I murdered my mother and my father,’ he said, and _wow,_ that was not the direction Beau had anticipated the conversation going. ‘I would do anything in the world to have them tell me that it wasn’t my fault, but none of that would change the fact that I killed them. Your parents were not good people, Beauregard, and no letter that you read is ever going to change that. I would not let them have the last word.’

 

Beau considered his words carefully, but still put the letter in her mental “keep” pile. She could always destroy it later.

 

Even then, Caleb’s words ruminated in her mind for several hours.

 

Just another godsdamned thing that she didn’t want to think about.

 

…

The night of the worst storm they’d had yet, Beau was awoken not by lightning, but by screaming.

 

It took her a second or so to recognize the source of the scream – Frederick’s nanny, Amelia – and it was the most harrowing things Beau had ever heard in her life, second only to maybe the death rattle that Molly had made when Lorenzo sunk his glaive into the tiefling’s chest. For the rest of her life, Beau would never forget that scream.

 

Before Jester had even started to properly stir, Beau was on her feet, and out the door. Frederick’s room was down the hall a little way, but with her goggles on, Beau could tell that the door was swinging open, and a couple of dark figures were milling around outside it.

 

Beau gave a piercing, guttural yell, both to wake her friends (if they hadn’t woken already), and to throw those that she determined to be her enemies off guard.

 

It worked, sort of. She managed to get a couple of pretty good punches in, before they started fighting back. She was doing okay, and then Yasha showed up, wielding the Magician’s Judge, Jester not far behind her, and Beau said, ‘Take care of this!’ and ran into Frederick’s bedroom.

 

She noticed three things all at once: the window was open, rain from the lashing downpour having soaked the floor beneath it. Second, there were three or four people in the room, hovering over a limp figure. Third, Frederick was missing.

 

Beau was smart enough to put two and two together. Knowing that Yasha and Jester were right behind her, and would take care of whatever needed to be taken care of, Beau ran for the window.

 

Unlike her room, Frederick did not have a convenient tree branch from which to climb out onto. Instead, Beau used her monk training to slide down the outside wall of the house. In the distance, she could see three dark figures, silhouetted against the lightning. She wasn’t sure whether it was her imagination or not, but she was sure she could hear a young boy’s scream.

 

Beau ran. She ran until her lungs felt like they were on fire, until her legs screamed with pain. She ran faster than she had ever run before.

 

She caught up within a matter of minutes. It probably helped that she had been training for speed her whole life, and that they were lugging a screaming child along with them. Frederick, she could see now, was held tightly against the hip of the man on the far left, who seemed unequipped to deal with the squirming. At least, Beau thought, they hadn’t knocked him out. Though maybe it would have been less frightening for him if they had.

 

‘Let him go,’ she said, with as much fury in her voice as she could muster, which was all of it. Rain soaked her goggles, soaked her vestments, soaked her down to the skin. She was vaguely aware of the biting cold, but it seemed unimportant, compared to the rest of the situation at hand.

 

‘Or what?’ sneered the one on the far right. Beau shot him with lightning.

 

She’d never used her gloves in the rain before. In hindsight, she thought, it was probably a bad idea, given that her brother was so close by. Still, it didn’t matter; the guy dropped like a sack of potatoes, groaning. The other two shifted into a defensive stance, and the one holding Frederick tightened his grip.

 

To Beau, the screams coming from her brother were louder than the lightning, though she was sure she was probably just imagining it. She tightened her own grip on her staff, and went for the one in the middle.

 

He was ready for her.

 

He parried her staff shot with his sword, and countered with a savage knee to her abdomen. She felt a rib or two crack. Through the blood pounding in her ears, she heard the one she’d lightning punched get to his feet. She turned to face him, and the other one sliced across her back with his sword.

 

Beau had been in three against one fights before; in tavern brawls, in training, in back alley ambushes. Never with rain lashing down around her, ruining any visibility that she had. The only time she could see properly was when the thunder and the lightning crashed down around her. The good part about that was that none of her assailants could see, either.

 

Assuming they were human. It was a little hard to tell, amongst all of this. One of them yelled in pain, as she whacked him across the back of the head.

 

‘Whatever she’s paying isn’t worth this!’ another one yelled, and the other two seemed to agree. Before Beau could do anything, they had started to run. She clenched her fist, and went to shoot lightning at one of them. Then, she looked down and saw the terrified kid clutching her leg. Instead of running away, he had run towards her. Had seen her in amongst the lightning, and the chaos.

 

He was screaming in utter terror.

 

 _Fuck_.

 

The rain was coming down even harder now, if it were possible, and vicious lightning unrelated to gloves sliced through the sky. They were at least a mile from the house. Frederick clearly wasn’t in any condition to be walking, and Beau—she felt a stabbing pain through her torso as she bent to pick him up. She gritted her teeth through what she knew was, at the very least, a couple of broken ribs.

 

‘Come on, buddy,’ she muttered to her brother, who was still shaking with sobs. The one good thing about Kamordah was that it was surrounded by mountains, and being surrounded by mountains, there were a shit-ton of caves nearby. Beau had used more than a few of them for smuggling operations. She supposed some of them were probably _still_ used for smuggling. It was shelter enough for one night.

 

By the time she found a cave she’d known was nearby, they were both shivering, freezing to the touch. Beau wasn’t sure if the rain had started to freeze or not, but the last drops had felt like ice knives against her skin. Hunched over with Frederick held in front of her, she tried to shield him from as much of the rain as possible. Every step she took, though, she felt the broken halves of her ribs shifting, threatening to move somewhere that they shouldn’t.

 

‘I want to go home,’ he cried,’ trembling.

 

‘I know, I know,’ Beau muttered. ‘But we can’t go anywhere while there’s lightning coming down. You’re a brave kid, right?’ Frederick sobbed, and nodded, and Beau’s heart almost broke for him. He had been through so much in the last couple of weeks; losing his parents, meeting his sister, getting snatched from his room in the middle of the night.

 

Hopefully, on top of all of that, he wouldn’t freeze to death.

 

Beau rummaged in the pouches along her belt, looking for something that could help them warm up. She had wrapped her (somehow only a little bit damp) fur-lined coat around Frederick’s shoulders.

 

Her tinderbox was soaked.

 

What she wouldn’t give now to have been sent to the Soltryce Academy, instead of the Cobalt Soul. She could have lit a fire to warm them. Or put up a bubble, keeping them safe against the world outside.

 

That was a nice thought. Safe from the world outside.

 

It took about five minutes for the message that Beau had been waiting for to start broadcasting inside her head. ‘ _Beau, it’s Jester? Did you get him? Are you guys okay? I think I have to use all the words to get it to send—_ ’ That was where it cut off.

 

 _I’m fine_ , she would have said, if she was alone, even if it wasn’t exactly close to the truth. ‘Can you get to us?’ she asked. Even those few words took all the breath out of her.

 

‘ _I think so_ ,’ was Jester’s answer, inside Beau’s head. She would never quite get used to that. ‘ _I can just_ Locate Object _on your clothes, and keep going until we find you. That’s still not enough words, so I—_ ’

 

The storm was a fierce one. Even in the dark of the cave, Beau could see the lightning thrash across the sky, and every time the thunder cracked open the heavens, Frederick whimpered, and gripped her a little tighter. Each time he did, Beau felt her broken ribs shifting, and bit back a groan of pain. While the rain had washed the initial blood from her vestments, she could now feel fresh stuff mixing with water, and staining everything it touched. Even still, she did not loosen her own grip. After less than two weeks in his company, her brain had fully accustomed itself to the idea that Frederick was Her Responsibility, if not as a guardian, then at least as an older sister.

 

Whatever happened, she couldn’t leave him behind.

 

That was the thought that Beau held onto, the more blood she felt seep from the wound at her back, the more she felt her ribs burn with every breath that she took. Passing out was not an option.

 

There was a horrible, bright flash of thunder, and Beau saw an ominous figure standing at the mouth of the cave. Tall and terrifying, skeletal wings spread. Beau blinked.

 

There was one person in the world that would walk through a storm to get to her. Not that the rest of them wouldn’t, but Yasha seemed to shake off storms in a way that no-one else could.

 

‘Hey Yasha.’ Beau smiled. She wasn’t quite sure whether or not it was a hallucination. Even now, she knew there was only one person in the world she’d want to hallucinate, if she was about to die. One person that could bring her the comfort that she so desired.

 

Then, Beau saw Jester standing at her side, and realized that the two of them must have _Dimension Door_ ed their way here.

 

A warm hand touched hers, and she gripped it. Couldn’t tell whose hand it was, couldn’t tell anything else in the world, but gripping onto that hand grounded her to the world, and she sure as fuck wasn’t going to let it go.

 

‘I only have a couple of spells left,’ was saying, and knelt down to touch Beau’s shoulders. That simple action was enough to bring the reality of the situation crashing back down around her.

 

‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Give it to him.’ Beau didn’t think that her brother was badly hurt but even with her fur-lined jacket wrapped around him, Frederick was shivering badly. Beau was as well, but she didn’t want either of her friends to know that. Any healing that Jester had needed to go to Frederick.

 

Jester hesitated, but nodded. She put her blue hands on the boy’s shoulder, and let her magic flow into him. His shivers seemed to subside a little, but didn’t stop, which was a good thing. Beau seemed to recall that when the shivering stopped, it was pretty fucking bad. It took her a moment to realize that _she_ had stopped shivering.

 

‘Do you have enough to—’ Beau coughed, and a wave of pain shot through her. ‘—to get him back?’

 

‘I think so,’ Jester agreed. ‘Beau, what about—’

 

‘I’ll take her,’ Yasha said, immediately. ‘Take him and go.’

 

Jester hesitated, but bent down to pick up Frederick. Beau had thought he’d fallen asleep, but he immediately started wailing as Jester pulled him away.

 

‘It’s okay,’ Beau croaked. ‘Jester will get you back to where you’re warm and safe.’

 

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ he sobbed.

 

‘I’ll be with you soon,’ Beau promised him. ‘I’m not going anywhere. Go,’ she urged Jester, who hesitated. With a flash of blue light, the two of them had _Dimension Door_ ed away. With any luck, it would only take them a couple of leaps to get back to the house, where it was...maybe not safe, but at the very least dry.

 

Yasha moved to pick up Beau, and must have bumped against something, because Beau felt one of the broken ribs shift again, and felt a sharp, stabbing pain in her chest. It was suddenly a little hard to breathe.

 

She must have screamed, or yelled, or something, because Yasha pulled her arms away like she’d just touched lava. ‘Beau?’ she said, uncertainly. Her voice sounded very far away. Beau coughed, and felt the pain shoot through her again. The air seemed to have been sucked from her lungs, and she was vaguely aware that there was a strange copper-like taste in her mouth.

 

Beau wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or not, but Yasha seemed to be glowing. Or at least, her hands were. They touched Beau’s chest lightly, and Beau could feel her wounds just barely start to knit themselves back together.

 

Even still, she couldn’t help but let out a whimper as Yasha picked her up, bridal-style, and dashing back out into the storm.

 

Lungs screaming, body shivering, Beau’s last cognizant thought before she passed out was that at least Frederick would be safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe smut next chapter, hopefully. Come see my terrible posts on tumblr @thefriendlymurderer


	11. Chapter Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some potentially triggery abuse related conversations in this chapter.

 

Chapter Eleven

 

Yasha ran as fast as she dared, back to the house, wings lifted over her head in an attempt to protect Beau from the rain. If she’d still had her real wings – her proper wings – she could have flown them back to the house. Now that she thought about it, though, she was actually faster on the ground.

 

Beau’s scream had shaken Yasha to the core. She had never heard the other woman make a sound like that before, so filled with pain, and sadness. Now, unconscious in Yasha’s arms, her normally healthily brown skin was mottled and pale, there was blood trickling from her lips, and each breath that came from her body came with a wheeze.

 

Yasha needed to get her back to the house – back to Caduceus – as quickly as possible. Not so quickly, though, that she made Beau’s injuries any worse. There were definitely some broken ribs there, not to mention the long, deep cut across the back, and based on the wheezing sounds that Beau was making, possibly a punctured lung.

 

What had taken less than a minute, with Jester’s  _Dimension Door_ seemed to take a lifetime without. Every step she took jolted Beau’s body, made the wheezing worse, but if they didn’t move, then it would probably be much worse. While Yasha knew that she was exaggerating the journey in her mind, it still took almost ten minutes to make it back to the front door, where the rest of the group were waiting under the eaves.

 

Caduceus and Fjord both ran out to meet her. Jester, she supposed, was up with the boy – Frederick. Yasha reoriented her wings to make sure Beau was properly covered while Caduceus healed her. Yasha’s heartbeat seemed to slow down, as she watched Beau’s color return to normal, listened as the breathing evened out, and the bleeding stopped. Even still Yasha noticed that her own clothes, dark as they were, seemed to be covered in Beau’s blood.

 

‘We need to get her inside, where it’s dry and warm,’ Fjord said. Yasha nodded. Quickly, but carefully, she ran inside, bloody water dripping from her form. The rest of the Mighty Nein followed her up the staircase at a run.

 

Jester was waiting for them at the end of the hallway, and Yasha heard Frederick screaming in the background.

 

‘I can go help calm him,’ Nott said. She took a half-backwards glance towards Beau, then went to Frederick’s room.

 

‘Amelia’s with him,’ Jester told them. ‘He wants Beau. Is she—’ Seeing how limp the figure in Yasha’s arms was, Jester’s demeanor changed entirely, and she rushed to Yasha’s side, and followed her into the bedroom.

 

‘Okay, okay,’ Jester said, as Yasha lay Beau down onto the bed. ‘First we need to get her out of the wet clothes. I don’t have _Prestidigitation_.’

 

Yasha immediately went to take off Beau’s chest wrappings, and pants. Fjord and Caleb both turned around. Yasha hardly thought that it mattered. In any case, Jester brought over a heap of blankets that Yasha used to both cover and warm Beau.

 

Caduceus gave her a second  _Cure Wounds_ , and then a third, for good measure. The majority of Beau’s wounds seemed to have healed, but she did not regain consciousness.

 

‘I’d wager she just needs a good rest,’ Caduceus said. He didn’t seem overly concerned, though lines of worry still creased Jester’s face.

 

‘I will stay with her,’ Yasha said. ‘Jester, you can sleep in my room if you want.’

 

‘No, I want to stay here, too,’ Jester said. Her blue hair was still soaked, and Yasha realized that she, too was drenched. At some point in the past few minutes, her wings had retracted back into her shoulder blades. Without either of them saying anything, Caduceus gave them each a towel that he had procured from somewhere. Accepting that there was not much more she could do in the moment, Yasha sat down beside the bed, and began drying herself off. Jester followed suit. 

 

Soon, it was just the three of them alone in the room, both Yasha and Jester watching the steady rise and fall of Beau’s chest as she slept.

 

‘Nott told me you guys kissed,’ Jester said, suddenly, and from her tone of voice, it was clear to Yasha that Jester had been dying to discuss this for some time. Yasha frowned.

 

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was...very nice.’

 

‘Beau _really_ likes you,’ Jester continued. ‘She’s liked you since the first time we all met in Trostenwald. She was flirting like _crazy_.’ Yasha frowned. She hadn’t realized that. She had thought the strangeness between them had been the result of Yasha’s own awkwardness.

 

‘I didn’t—I’m not very good at this sort of thing,’ Yasha mumbled. 

 

‘Though,’ Jester continued, ‘I think she just wanted to sleep with you. Then, at least. Now I think it’s like – _love_ love.’ Yasha’s frown deepened. How had she been so ignorant of the advances of the person she cared so much about?

 

‘Are you okay?’ Jester asked, tilting her head, as though she had not started them on this topic of conversation. But then, there was more than one thing on Yasha’s mind.

 

‘I am just worried,’ Yasha admitted. ‘About Beauregard. The longer we stay here, the more withdrawn she’s becoming.’ Though Yasha – and the rest of the Mighty Nein – had readily agreed to stay and help Beau figured out what was going on with the winery, it was a decision that part of her was starting to regret.

 

If Beau’s parents hadn’t already been dead, Yasha would have found it difficult to stop herself from at least putting the fear of death into them for what they had done to their daughter. Had taken this wonderful, curious, intelligent person, and….and done  _something_ until she’d had barely a shred of self-worth left. In sleep, once more, she seemed calmer, less put-upon by the pain of being here.

 

_Family_ , Yasha thought, should be a thing that brought people comfort, not fear. The way Zuala had once brought her comfort. Now, the only family Yasha had left to bring her comfort were the ones she was with now. Bonds far greater than friendship.

 

‘Do you think we should leave?’ Jester asked. The tiefling clearly had her own thoughts on the matter, but for some reason wanted to hear Yasha’s.

 

‘Yes,’ Yasha said, immediately. ‘Though, I don’t think I’ll be able to convince her.’ 

 

Beau would be better off far away from this place.

 

Far away from the memories of the people that had worked so hard to make her feel worthless.

 

…

When Beau woke, it was in her own bed. Or, rather, the bed that she had swapped with Yasha for. It was comfortable enough, but her body ached enough to remind her that something had definitely happened last night.

 

‘What happened?’ she croaked. Last thing she remembered, she was lying in the cave, barely able to breathe.

 

‘You punctured your _lung_ ,’ Jester said, in an awed sort of voice. ‘One of your broken ribs _really_ didn’t like it when Yasha tried to pick you up.’

 

Beau was vaguely aware of Yasha standing in the corner of the room. There was a strange look on her face that Beau couldn’t quite decipher. Regret? 

 

‘You were _so_ out of it,’ Jester continued, in a loud whisper. ‘Caduceus had to put so many spells into you.’

 

For all that, though, Beau still felt exhausted. Like she had spent half the night freezing in a cave in the middle of a thunderstorm. Though, now that she thought about it, it had only been about ten minutes before Jester and Yasha had come to save the day.

 

‘Is Frederick okay?’ Beau asked. Her throat was dry, and sore, and she needed some kind of liquid. Caduceus, sitting beside Jester, seemed to notice her trying to swallow, and lifted a small glass of water to her lips. Though she drank greedily, some of it still managed to trickle down the sides of her chin. ‘What about Amelia?’

 

‘He’ll be fine,’ Caduceus assured her. ‘He was in much better shape than you. Amelia took a blow to the head, but she’ll be okay, too.’

 

Beau breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t think she’d be able to forgive herself if her being here had gotten her brother killed.

 

‘They were trying to take him?’ Yasha asked. She looked worried, Beau thought. Or maybe it was just a trick of the imagination.

 

‘Three of them,’ Beau said. ‘But they ran off. I have no idea why. How many did you guys—’

 

‘We fought six bad guys,’ Jester announced. ‘They were really not expecting us to be here, right Fjord?’

 

‘Right,’ Fjord agreed, unmoving from his position at the door. ‘They got _real_ nervous when they realized they were outnumbered. Couple of ‘em scarpered, and the rest we’ve got locked up downstairs. I gotta say, those wine cellars make a pretty handy dungeon.’

 

‘Yeah, I know,’ Beau said, darkly. The words earned her a curious look from the rest of the group, letting her know that she’d probably said a bit more than she’d wanted to.

 

Beau threw her blankets off, and made to stand up. Fjord, Jester and Caduceus all took a step forward to stop her.

 

‘Whoah, whoah, whoah,’ Fjord said. ‘What are you doing? You need to rest.’

 

‘I’m gonna go downstairs and punch the shit out of the guys that tried to kidnap my brother,’ Beau said, calmly. Her “punching someone until they tell the truth” thing might not have been a hundred percent effective, but damned if it didn’t make her feel better.

 

‘We’ll handle that,’ Fjord assured her. ‘You need to rest.’

 

‘Don’t worry,’ Jester said, pounding her fist into her hand. ‘I can cast _Zone of Truth_ , and then punch them anyway!’

 

‘I’ve got a better idea,’ Beau said. ‘How about we kill them all, and then you just cast _Speak With Dead_.’

 

There was an awkward silence, and Beau knew why. It was one thing to kill someone in the heat of battle, but to go and execute someone that you’d taken prisoner was probably a step further than any of them were willing to take. A step further than  _she_ was willing to take, if she were to admit to it. 

 

‘How about this,’ Caduceus said, gently. ‘You rest up for a bit, spend some time with your brother, and when you’re feeling better, we can all go and have a chat with the gentlemen downstairs.’

 

Beau acquiesced. She knew that she wasn’t going to get a better compromise. They probably wouldn’t stop her if she started throwing punches, but that seemed like a shitty thing to do to the people that had worked so hard to save her life the previous night.

 

Even still, she grumbled as she got back into bed. Didn’t want to let them think it had been  _that_ easy.

 

Once she was settled, Nott came in with Frederick, who wasted no time in running over, and climbing into the bed next to her. Nott (barely a few inches taller than the kid) gave him a slight nudge. ‘Remember what we practiced.’

 

Frederick nodded. ‘Thank-you for saving my life, Beau,’ he said, and nuzzled his head into her stomach. Her ribs complained a little bit, but it was worth it.

 

‘Any time, kiddo,’ Beau told him, smiling fiercely. There was something about the way he seemed to love her so unconditionally that warmed her heart. He didn’t care if she said something awkward, or said more than she was supposed to, or anything like that. He just...loved her. She’d never had that before.

 

Once Frederick returned to his room for a nap – much happier from having seen his sister – Beau calmed down a little. He didn’t seem to be harboring any obvious injuries from the previous night. Even his emotional state seemed better than her own. Kids were resilient, she reminded herself. 

 

Still, there was always the possibility that whoever had taken him would come back to finish the job. To the point where Caleb, Caduceus and Yasha were keeping watch on the perimeter. Beau kind of missed Yasha’s comforting presence.

 

They had to figure out why someone had tried to take him.

 

‘Maybe they were using him as bait,’ Nott suggested. ‘To get to you.’

 

Beau considered the option. It was definitely possible. If that were the case, though, they’d retreated quickly. Especially considered they’d probably had her on the ropes.

 

‘Or,’ she said. ‘They could have been taking him for ransom.’ 

 

Fjord nodded. ‘Both definite possibilities,’ he said. ‘There’s also the fact that we’re looking into why the winery’s bleedin’ money. I imagine that might ruffle a few feathers.’ Now that he’d said it, it seemed so obvious.

 

‘Either way there are some bad guys out there that want to do bad things to your family, Beau,’ Jester mused.

 

‘Bad things have been happening in my family for a long time,’ Beau said, without really meaning to. She decided, then, that she should probably just stop talking.

 

The afternoon passed slowly, and it was almost four o’clock before Beau managed to convince her friends that she was in good enough shape to go and talk to their prisoners.

 

Fjord, Nott and Jester took over on perimeter duties, leaving Caleb, Caduceus and Yasha to accompany Beau downstairs to the cellar.

 

They got to the doorway, and Beau froze.

 

She didn’t want to go in there.

 

‘Are you okay, Beauregard?’ Caduceus was asking. Even though he’d said her name, Beau took a moment or so to realize that the question had been directed at her.

 

‘Yeah, just...ribs,’ she said, wincing. It wasn’t entirely untrue. Healing never quite took all the pain away from an injury, and there had been a lot of injuries over the years. She was remembering, as though a tidal wave had hit her, all the times she’d been shoved towards this door, bleeding and bruised.

 

‘I can’t do this,’ Beau announced. She turned tail, and walked quickly – just barely not running – back upstairs, leaving her stunned friends in her wake.

 

…

 

In lieu of any other options, Beau went to the room she shared with Jester. With half the party out in the grounds, and the rest downstairs, she might be able to get a few minutes of peace to try and focus her thoughts.

 

Her head was between her knees, and her heart was pounding like a drum at Harvest Festival.  _What the fuck was happening?_

 

She’d been in that cellar three or four times since coming back to Kamordah. Why was this time so different that it would set off such visceral memories? Memories of the first time they had locked her in there. She’d been six years old, and had broken a vase. The stupid thing was, it hadn’t even been on purpose. She’d run around the corner too fast, and sent the thing flying.

 

They’d locked her in there for an hour, and when she came out, she was still sobbing, snot dripping from her nose, and thirsty as fuck. She was pretty sure it was her earliest memory, which was kinda messed up, when she thought about it. After a while, the sessions got longer and longer, to the point where if Beau predicted they might be thinking about it, she filled her pockets with food. 

 

Sometimes it had been a whole thing, Beau pushing the boundaries of what she could do before they’d chuck her in there.

 

Ah, happy memories.

 

‘Beau?’ Yasha was knocking on the door. Beau wondered, vaguely, why she was the one that had come up. Had they played boulder, parchment, shears, and she’d been the one that lost?

 

‘Yeah, I’m here,’ Beau said. Maybe she’d be able to get a pity kiss. The door opened slowly, and Yasha stepped in. Ducked in, rather, as the doorway was a few inches lower than her head. Beau wondered, vaguely, why she hadn’t noticed that before.

 

‘Can I sit?’ Yasha asked. She was gesturing not to the chair beside the bed, but to the bed itself. Beau nodded, and Yasha sat down cross-legged next to her. 

 

Beau half-expected there to be some kind of preamble, but Yasha, ever direct, got straight to the point.

 

‘Beau, did your parents lock you in the cellar?’ she asked. Beau kind of wanted to tell her to fuck off, but given the things Yasha had told her about _her_ past, it seemed like it would be a bit hypocritical. Not to mention a little mean.

 

Beau nodded, not looking up. ‘Not like...every day,’ she said, not lifting her head from her knees. ‘Just when I did something  _really_ bad.’ The time she’d been arrested for buying suude. The time she’d been arrested for  _selling_ suude. A dozen or so other times besides. It wasn’t even for days at a time. The longest stretch had been forty or so hours, which she’d whiled away drawing in the dust, and counting bottles. A sudden thought hit her. A thought that should have hit her a long fucking time ago. She looked up.

 

‘That’s...not normal, is it?’

 

‘No,’ Yasha said, shaking her head. Clearly even someone that grew up in a swamp knew that. ‘It is not.’

 

‘Oh,’ Beau said. On some level, _she_ must have known that, even if she didn’t want to admit it, but sometimes she didn’t quite have a feel for whether things were normal or not. She had thought that was just a side effect from having had a shitty childhood, but Fjord, who had, by all accounts, had a worse childhood, seemed to understand this shit better than she did.

 

Like how apparently locking your misbehaving child in the cellar  _wasn’t_ a thing that all parents did. She wondered if they’d ever locked Frederick in the cellar. If they had, she would go and get Jester to  _Raise_ them from the dead, just so she could kill them again.

 

She didn’t know how to feel about the fact that there was no indication whatsoever that her brother had been mistreated. How to feel about the fact that apparently, her parents had thought that  _she_ needed harsh discipline, but he didn’t. Maybe it was an age thing; maybe they would have gotten crueler as he got older. Beau was glad he would never have to find out.

 

‘I mean,’ she said, shrugging. ‘I told you all I didn’t want to come back here.’

 

There was an awkward sort of pause. ‘You thought I was exaggerating,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. She was used to saying things that were true in an off-hand sort of voice, and having people think she was exaggerating, or worse, outright lying.

 

‘You do have a tendency to be a bit...’ Yasha hesitated. 

 

‘Blase,’ Beau finished, for her.

 

‘Yes,’ Yasha nodded. ‘I am not sure about the rest of them, but sometimes I have trouble telling when you are being serious.’

 

Beau grimaced. It wasn’t the first time she’d run into that problem. If she had a gold piece for the number of times she’d misinterpreted sarcasm, or had her own sincerity mistaken for it, she wouldn’t have needed a fucking inheritance.

 

‘I’m worried,’ she said, apropos of nothing.

 

‘What about?’

 

Beau hesitated. She didn’t want to voice that dark thought that had been troubling her since she had returned to Kamordah. ‘What if he turns out like me?’

 

Yasha frowned. ‘What is wrong with how you turned out?’ Beau knew it hadn’t been an on purpose compliment, but she appreciated it just the same.

 

‘Y’know... _wrong_. Like he doesn’t quite fit in with the world.’

 

‘None of us fit in with the world,’ Yasha reminded her. 

 

‘No,’ Beau admitted. ‘But at least you’ve all got something special about you. I’m just...I’m just a shitty rich kid from Kamordah that fell in with a group of people that were all better than her.’

 

‘Nobody thinks that, Beau,’ Yasha said, gently.

 

‘ _I_ think that,’ Beau spat. ‘No-one ever chose me for anything, and if they did, it was only because they could get something out of it. I don’t get any God telling me that I’m special. I just get people who tolerate me because they don’t have a better option.’

 

‘It’s not your fault they couldn’t see how special and amazing you were—you are.’ Beau looked across at Yasha, not even daring to hope, as though whatever had happened over in the winery had been a once off. She couldn’t let herself get burned again.

 

There was a soft, sad sort of smile on Yasha’s face. Beau took breath, and rested her head against Yasha’s shoulder once more. Yasha didn’t pull away.


	12. Chapter Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short, low-keyish chapter with a little bit of sex. It's not as smutty as I'd planned, because I decided that would break the story flow a bit more than I wanted, but I feel like I will probably write something smutty that's unrelated to this story, later. Have fun!

Chapter Twelve

 

A little more composed, Beau made her way back downstairs, Yasha not far behind her. The whole group was there now, and Beau could tell that there had been a Conversation. She could feel the stares of her friends, burning her skin.

 

‘I hate to suggest this,’ Fjord said, and he shared a nervous sort of glance with Jester. ‘But I—we think that maybe we should drop this. Leave Kamordah.’

 

Beau saw red. ‘When the fuck have we ever let something go because it was too difficult?’ she demanded of them, knowing that they had let things go half a dozen times. 

 

She was fucking pissed. 

 

Not because they were wrong, but because they were right. What point was there in investigating the winery that she planned to sell anyway? The longer she stayed here, the harder it would be to pull herself away. The place held a strange sort of sway over her; the same way it had so long ago. In no way did she want to be here, but she couldn’t physically bring herself to leave. Then, it had taken the Cobalt Soul to literally drag her away. Now, it would take the Mighty Nein.

 

Before they could even say anything to argue against her, she had held up a hand, had let the fury in her body subside. ‘Being here,’ she said, ‘It ’s not that bad.’  She wondered if she was  trying to convince herself, more than she was trying to convince them.

 

They didn’t look convinced.

 

‘I mean,’ she continued, waving a hand. ‘You’ve all had it way worse than I have. I can deal with some bad memories for a few more days.’ Caleb and his shit with Trent Ikithon, Yasha and her wife, Fjord and the orphanage...Beau wasn’t quite sure what Caduceus’s full story was, but he was distracted by a moth at the window, and hadn’t heard what she was saying.

 

‘It’s not a competition, Beau,’ Fjord said, gently. ‘You’re allowed to feel bad about things that happened even if they weren’t as bad as someone else’s things. Which, let me point out, I’m not convinced that they weren’t.’ Well, he was finally coming around to the things she’d told him the first fucking time. That was something. She had half a mind to give him a big fucking _I told you so_.

 

Beau thought back to some of the things that her parents had said to her.

 

_We_ have  _to love you, Beauregard. Not everyone will._

 

_Why can’t you just be_ normal?

 

How would it feel to have someone love her unconditionally? Not just because they had to, or because they had learned to tolerate her. To unequivocally choose to spend time with her. A tiny voice in the back of her head told her to look at the people standing around her, the ones that were so concerned about her that they would risk her wrath. The ones that would go to hell and back just to help her out.

 

‘Just…’ she said. ‘One more day. Talk to these guys, call in the Crownsguard. If we haven’t made any headway in one day, I’ll sign whatever paperwork I need to to get this done, and we can leave.’ There was a slight pause. ‘Uh...We may be talking a small child with us.’

 

For some reason, she’d expected them to be shocked, or surprised. Not a single one of them did.

 

‘Well, yeah,’ Nott said. ‘We sort of figured. I mean, you can’t leave him here, right?’

 

‘Right,’ Beau said. ‘Right.’ She thought about how many times her friends had had her back here, even without her realizing it. How they’d already accepted the fact that they would be adding one more to the party, without her ever having mentioned it. ‘So we may need to…be a little less reckless for a while.’

 

No getting involved in continent-spanning wars, or pulling jobs for crime bosses, or accidentally becoming pirates.

 

Just...whatever it was they did that didn’t involve that. Killing gnolls in the downtime. Whatever. There was a vague thought in the back of her head that she didn’t particularly want to listen to, trying to get her to think of the reality of the situation.

 

Instead, she followed her friends back down to the cellar, gripping Yasha’s hand slightly as they stepped inside. It was okay. Nothing could hurt her now. Her friends were with her.

 

There were two of them, all tied to chairs, with rags shoved into their mouths. One of them, Jester had drawn a dick on the side of his face.

 

Once upon a time, Beau would have been right up in their faces, fist clenched, ready to punch them into oblivion if they so much as thought of lying to her. She still half wanted to do that now, but the thought of it brings her no pleasure. She looked to Fjord, and to Jester, and, with a slight grimace, let them take the lead.

 

She felt the slight tingle in the air, as Jester cast  _Zone of Truth_ , and pulled the gags out. Beau pursed her lips shut.

 

Not that anyone was asking anything of her, but she didn’t particularly want to say anything while that zone was up.

 

‘Now, I understand it must be frustrating to be sitting there, with your hands tied, but we just want a few simple answers to a few simple questions, then we’ll be handing you over to the Crownsguard.’ Fjord’s voice, like always, oozed charisma. If the lackeys were smart, though, they wouldn’t say anything.

 

They were smart.

 

Or, at least, smarter than Beau would have given them credit for. They had, after all, not done their proper reconnaissance, and gotten into a fight they were not ready for.

 

‘Now, I don’t think you want me to have to turn this over to one of my good friends here.’ Fjord gestured to Caleb, _Firebolt_ in his hands, and Nott, crossbow at the ready, and Yasha, running a finger along the edge of the Magician’s Judge.

 

Whether or not any of her friends  _would_ torture a couple of unarmed and helpless prisoners for her benefit, Beau didn’t know, but she appreciated the fact that they were perfectly willing to pretend that they were capable of it.

 

Thankfully, it was enough for them to start...well, not spilling, but talking. ‘If we tell you anything, she’s gonna kill us,’ one of them said. Beau raised an eyebrow. 

It was the second time one of the kidnappers had used “she,” referring to whoever had hired them, and she had a sickening idea as to who it might have been.

 

She wanted to be wrong.

 

She hoped she was wrong.

 

She didn’t think she was wrong.

 

…

 

After the prisoners had been handed off to the Crownsguard, after they’d all been questioned, Beau went upstairs.

 

She didn’t particularly want to think about that nagging thought in the back of her head, about the winery, about the house, about her brother.

 

The still-healing wound on her back was giving her a little bit of grief, and having to be down in the cellar certainly hadn’t helped. There was another parallel scar right along side the new one, from where...she couldn’t even remember where that one was from. Something horrific that she’d glossed over, no doubt.

 

She stood in the hallway, staring at the wall. This might be the last time she would ever stand here. She didn’t feel any grief, any regret at the idea of leaving it all behind.

 

Beau turned as heavy footsteps came up behind her. Yasha stood there, nervously, holding a small jar in her hands.

 

‘I have some ointment from Jester,’ Yasha said. Beau frowned. She didn’t remember telling Yasha that her back was giving her problems.

 

‘You keep trying to adjust your, uh...’ Yasha gestured towards Beau’s chest wrappings. _Oh._ She hadn’t even noticed that she’d been doing it.

 

‘In here,’ Beau said, leading Yasha not to the room that she was sharing with Jester, but to her old childhood bedroom that Yasha was sleeping in. The last thing they needed was Jester coming in and misinterpreting things.

 

Beau pulled off her top, and started to unwind her chest wrappings.

 

Yasha averted her gaze, staring around the room, and Beau couldn’t help but bite back her amusement. There wasn’t exactly much to look at. The walls were bare, and the furniture was plain. All those times she had tried to take the initiative in redecorating, it had been back it its original state within a week.

 

Beau laid the wrappings down on the nightstand, and lay on her stomach. Yasha made a slight noise that might have been shock.

 

‘It’s bad?’ Beau asked. In the blink of an eye, she remembered the pain as the sword had arced across her back, but it was a false memory. It hadn’t really hurt that much until later.

 

‘Little bit,’ Yasha said. Her tone of voice was enough for Beau to know that it was pretty bad. No matter how much ointment she put on, it was probably a scar she’d have for the rest of her life.

 

 

Yasha smoothed the ointment over the wound, and began gently rubbing it in. Beau didn’t think she’d ever been touched like that by another person. Yasha’s touch was firm, but gentle. Just the right amount of pressure. Beau relaxed into the touch.  She could have fallen asleep there. 

 

She might’ve done, too, if Yasha’s presence wasn’t setting off other _things_ in her body.

 

‘You know, I think I’ve got somewhere else that needs your attention,’ Beau said, making her voice as sultry as she dared, but even then, it came off sounding kind of pained. 

 

‘Do you have another scar that needs the cream?’ Yasha asked, sounding worried that she had missed one of Beau’s injuries.

 

_ Oh, man. _

 

Beau rolled onto her back, vaguely aware that she was now getting ointment all over the sheets. ‘My tits, Yasha. I want you to touch my tits.’

 

‘I—oh,’ Yasha said, all of a sudden very flustered. Beau tried not to laugh. She knew that Yasha had been married, so she probably wasn’t a virgin. Even still, she was slightly hesitant, as her large hands reached down to cup Beau’s breasts. She touched them with reverence, as though handling a priceless work of art. ‘Is this okay?’

 

‘Yes,’ Beau said. Yasha rubbed her thumbs over Beau’s nipples. ‘Do you want—I mean, we don’t have to, but it would be nice...’ she trailed off.

 

Yasha hesitated. ‘Do you want our first time to be here?’ she asked. Beau considered the question. This would just be another way of replacing those bad memories with better ones. It didn’t escape her notice that so many of the new ones involved Yasha.

 

‘Yes,’ Beau said. She did not hesitate in reaching up to pull Yasha down towards her, to engage the aasimar in a passionate, no holds-barred kiss. Her hands went to the laces of Yasha’s top (corset?), and started to untie them. 

 

Clothed, Yasha cut an imposing form, though anyone that knew her also knew that she could be more gentle than a light spring rain. Nude, Beau had, for some inane reason, expected her to be just as intimidating, but it was the exact opposite. Whereas Beau’s body was all hard, lean muscle, Yasha’s pure strength meant her muscles were behind a layer of pillowy softness. Beau could have gotten lost in staring at her body for days. Instead, she played with Yasha’s dark nipples for several minutes, grinning at the look on Yasha’s face. ‘I really like your breasts.’

 

Yasha frowned slightly. ‘Thank-you. I grew them myself.’ A pause. ‘Yours are...also very nice.’

 

Things...progressed from there. Beau had to bite down on her hand to stop herself from screaming out, and Yasha’s whole body shook, as if with thunder, when she came.

 

For a long while, they laid together, Beau’s head resting against Yasha’s bare chest, as she listened to the steady beat of the aasimar’s heart. It was a grounding, comforting sound.

 

The afternoon passed around them, but they did not engage, and when the sun went down, they didn’t get up to light the lamps.

 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

 

It was late – or early – when Beau woke up, and as much as she didn’t want to do the walk of shame, she knew that if she didn’t go back to the other room, Jester would start asking questions in the morning.

 

With a soft kiss to Yasha’s bare shoulder, Beau tiptoed out of the room, and down the hall. She opened the door quietly—

 

‘Did you guys fuck?’ came a loud whisper.

 

_Fuck_ .

 

‘Can this wait until tomorrow morning?’ Beau asked, running a hand back across her head.

 

‘You guys were gone all afternoon, and you didn’t come down for dinner,’ Jester said. ‘Fjord says you were probably just talking, but when I put my ear to the door—’

 

Beau didn’t have her goggles, and thus, could not see shit, but she knew Jester could see in the dark, and could see the exasperated eye-roll that Beau gave. ‘Jester, has anyone ever explained personal boundaries to you,’ she said, but it was with some affection.

 

Jester gasped. ‘You  _did_ fuck,’ she said. ‘How was it? Was it really good?’

 

‘It was fine,’ Beau said, knowing that she would not hear the end of it if she didn’t give Jester at least _something_. Truth told, it had been more than fine. It had been…It had made Beau feel _wanted_.

 

‘I haven’t really ready many books with just ladies in them, do you—’

 

‘Jester!’ Beau said. ‘I don’t really want to have this discussion.’ Not to mention, it wasn’t exactly fair to Yasha to have this discussion. Jester would just have to be disappointed.

 

It didn’t stop Jester from continuing to give Beau inquisitive looks throughout breakfast  the next day , and, when Beau didn’t break, got started on Yasha,  who had just started serving herself scrambled eggs from the dish.

 

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Yasha said, in her deadpan sort of voice, but when Jester wasn’t looking, she gave Beau a shy sort of smile. Beau couldn’t help but grin back. She had gotten so used to having one-night stands that she’d forgotten about how nice it was to have someone on your side, so to speak. The last person that had been that for Beau was Tori, and now…

 

W ell, Beau had been through enough to know she never wanted to leave anyone behind again. Especially not Yasha.

 

‘Sorry I left,’ Beau said, in a hushed tone, when Yasha sat down beside her. ‘I wanted to avoid awkward questions.’ She jerked her head towards Jester. ‘For all the good that’s done.’

 

‘You should’ve told her that I have tentacles, or something,’ Yasha said, and Beau couldn’t help but snort. Most people wouldn’t think of Yasha when discussing the term “comedic genius,” but at times the aasimar could be pretty fucking funny when she wanted to. And also sometimes when she didn’t want to.

 

‘What are you going to do today?’ Yasha asked, once Beau had finished her breakfast. Beau had been mulling over that thought herself as she moved her bacon around with a fork. One more day, she had told them, and yet now that she had to make a decision, her mind was blank of ideas.

 

Talk to Devos, she supposed. Then look through the study one more time, to see if she’d missed anything.

 

‘What do you want us to do?’ Jester asked. Beau frowned. They hadn’t finished talking to the growers – not that she thought the people that grew the grapes would know anything about what happened on the other end of the chain – and she’d heard from Narf that some of the pickers had started coming back into town. The least she could do was have her friends question them, so that whatever paperwork she signed, the new owners would know everything she did.

 

She’d had a long conversation with Devos about selling the winery in its current state. It had sort of blurred together with a lot of other long conversations that she didn’t quite understand. “You have a due diligence,” he told her, “to disclose any information that is pertinent to the sale. Withholding any such information will cause problems later down the line.” At this point, Beau didn’t care all that much. She would sell the winery for ten gold just to get it off her hands, but she still wanted to make sure it went to the right kind of people.

 

Certainly not anyone like her parents; rich and ignorant. Someone who liked wine  and who wasn’t a dick.

 

‘I like wine,’ Nott had told her. ‘Sell it to me.’ Beau waved her off. That didn’t count. All halflings liked wine.

 

D evos also told her that she didn’t necessarily need to sell the winery and the house together, which certainly simplified matters. ‘It is no small amount of paperwork,’ he’d said. ‘But I believe that is what you pay me for.’

 

What Beau really wanted to do was pay him to do it without involving her, but apparently that was a bridge too far. Her desire to know everything about anything that was going on was clashing immensely with her desire to never have anything to do with Kamordah ever again. At least, once they left, she’d be able to deal with it from a distance. Somewhere far away, like Nicodranas.

 

So, after breakfast, while her friends went down to the wineyards, Beau went upstairs. ‘Do you want some help?’ Yasha asked. Beau shook her head. This was really the sort of thing she needed to do alone. Possibly because she wanted to be the buffer between anything she found to decide whether or not she wanted to tell her friends.

 

The most important of these things was the letter still sitting in the desk. Beau still couldn’t bring herself to throw it away. Though she didn’t disagree with Caleb’s comments, she knew she would not be able to fully give herself closure until she had read it.

 

So she tore open the letter, hearing an angry voice in the back of her mind:

 

_ Use the godsdamned letter opener, Beauregard _ .

 

S he was sure he’d never said those exact words before, but it seemed like the kind of thing that he would say, getting mad over stupid, petty bullshit. 

 

Inside the envelope was a single piece of paper. Before she had even looked at it properly, Beau could tell that there wasn’t a lot written on it.

 

_Beauregard_ , it read.

 

_You may find this of interest._

 

Beau  stared at the words for several minutes.  Twice, she flipped the page over, just to make sure there was nothing written on the other side.

 

Then, she scrunched the letter into a ball, and threw it out the window.

 

She wasn’t sure what she had expected from reading the letter.  Certainly not six fucking words. Seven, she supposed, if you counted her name.

 

Though, she conceded, her father hardly could have known that it was the last letter he would ever write her. Could hardly have known that he would die from an arrow to the neck on the way to Deastock.

 

He had clearly thought that _something_ was going on, though, or he never would have written the letter. Never would have thought she’d come back here to read it. It was just like him, only doing something when it suited his own purposes.

 

If he had known he was going to die, what would he have said? Probably nothing that she wanted to hear, if that letter was any indication.  Still, the letter, which had been in with the ledgers, meant that  he had noticed something strange going on. Or, he was being a dick about what a well-kept ledger was supposed to look like. Either way, Beau’s curiousity was piqued. 

 

S he swung her staff around to her back, and went off to the winery to find Leland. Though they had already asked him about the ledgers, his answers had seemed forthright, if a little passive-aggressive. He still, she knew, harbored no small amount of resentment that the winery would be going to her, after she had spent so much time stealing from it. Beau hadn’t yet told him that she planned on selling it, but if he was smart, then he’d probably figured it out already.

 

B eau didn’t bother going to the wineyards first.  Fjord would only ask why  she was going to the winery, which would mean admitting that she had read the letter,  and  admitting what  her father’s last words to her were. Beau didn’t want to deal with that kind of drama.

 

The winery was empty when she got there. The workers were out on lunch, and Leland was nowhere to be seen. Taking care to check for traps, Beau rifled through some of the paperwork on his desk. It was nothing too out of the ordinary; expense reports, and purchase orders. Why they needed so much godsdamned wood, Beau couldn’t quite figure out.

 

More questions than answers in her head, Beau made her way back downstairs to the aging room.

 

She was starting to accept the fact that this wasn’t going to be a mystery that she could solve, and she fucking _hated_ it.

 

Frustrated, Beau kicked out at one of the barrels. Her kicks were pretty fucking strong, but this one left her hopping around, swearing in pain. She had expected to have just kicked a hole through the barrel, instead she hit what looked like solid wood.  The aging barrels had to be strong, but not that strong.

 

_Son of a bitch_ .

 

‘Beauregard?’ came a voice, and Beau jerked her head up. Leland – that smug motherfucker – was standing in the doorway.

 

‘Hey, Leland,’ Beau greeted him, cautiously. Not taking her eyes off him, they circled around each other, until she was at the door, and he was at the barrel. Definitely nothing suspicious about that. ‘I was just looking for you. Wanted to let you know I’m planning on signing my control of the winery over to Devos.’

 

Leland flinched, as she knew he would. That was the answer that Beau needed. That hypocritical motherfucker.

 

‘Do you know what a Cooper is?’ Beau asked. Leland frowned at her. Not because he didn’t know. Of course he knew what a Cooper was. Every winemaker worth their salt knew what a Cooper was. You didn’t store your wine in boxes, after all.

 

‘A barrel-maker,’ he said, slowly. Beau nodded. Of all the things she’d expected to learn on a pirate ship, making barrels wasn’t one of them.

 

‘Ever made a barrel?’

 

‘No.’ He eyed her, warily. Either he had a pretty damn good poker face, or he didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Beau suspected the former. He had his fingers too deep in the winery to not know if something fishy was going on.

 

‘You pick up on the differences between barrels pretty quick. Like how these barrels over here are a little bit heavier than the rest, because the bottom of ‘em is half wood. Almost like someone’s been siphoning off wine, and pretending that these are full barrels. Which is some ridiculous kind of overkill, because whoever’s doing it is also not filling the bottles all the way, and surely he’s not stupid enough to bankrupt the place he’s stealing from.’

 

He drew his sword, as she knew he would. Beau sidestepped, reading her staff to knock Leland the fuck out. ‘ You’re a filthy hypocrite,’ he snarled. He had always hated her. Time certainly hadn’t changed that much.

 

‘The difference being, I went ahead and decided to be less of a dickhead,’ Beau retorted. At least, she hoped she was being less of a dickhead. ‘You don’t get points for going the wrong way.’

 

‘She said you were a smart one.’ Beau faltered. That “she” better have not been who she thought it was. ‘Just like she said you’d be so busy grandstanding, you’d keep your back to the door.’

 

Beau smirked. ‘Nice try,’ she said. She didn’t turn around.

 

That was about the time she heard the whisper in her ear. ‘ _Beauregard,_ ’ said a familiar voice. ‘ _Go to sleep_ .’

 

B eau felt a strange cloud around her thoughts, a cloud that pressed in on everything. She tried to resist the darkness that followed, but she wasn’t strong enough.

 

The last things Beau saw before her eyes shut was a familiar black-haired, dark-eyed face.

 

_I fucking knew it._

 

Tori.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look it's the least twisty twist that ever twisted.


	14. Chapter Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence and blood in this chapter.

Chapter Fourteen

 

When Beau woke, it was in darkness, manacled to a straight-backed chair. Tori was standing in front of her, and had apparently just lifted whatever spell it was she’d cast in the first place.

 

The Tori Beau had known didn’t know magic from a grain of sand. It kind of felt like cheating. Back in the day, they had talked, more than once, about going to somewhere like the Soltryce Academy to learn magic, but it had the same kind of energy as saying they wanted to marry royalty, or fight a dragon. It’d be nice, but it was never going to happen. Places like that only took the best of the best.

 

‘Oh,’ Beau said, trying to sound nonchalant about the whole situation.‘Hey, Tori.’

 

The woman standing before her looked older. For some reason, that was the first thing that Beau noticed. In her head, Tori looked exactly the same as when they’d last seen each other, when they’d been dragged away to the cells from their room in the  _Cliff’s Keep_ . This Tori had shorter hair – it looked good on her – and a sword on her belt. She’d never been one for swords, back then. Just, as Beau supposed, she’d never been one for magic, either. They’d taken some sort of solace in being the same; boring, unpowered humans.

 

As she had suspected would happen, Tori punched her in the face. Tied to the straight-backed chair, Beau was unable to let her body move with the hit, and consequently felt it reverberate through her entire body.

 

Fuck.

 

She made a mental note to tell the Cobalt Soul: teach your trainees how to take a punch while tied to a chair. Though, it was starting to look possible that she might not make it back to the Cobalt Soul.

 

‘What, no “hey, Beau, good to see you”?’ Beau asked, knowing that it would rile Tori up, and somehow not particularly caring.

 

‘I spent three years in a cell after our little stint with the suude,’ Tori said. Beau would have felt a little guiltier had she not been tied to a chair, head pounding, nose dripping with blood.

 

‘I had nothing to do with that,’ Beau protested. ‘Someone else ratted us out.’

 

‘And yet you get away scot-free, while I rot away in darkness,’ she sneered. ‘Pull the other one, Beau.’ This wasn’t the Tori that Beau remembered. The Tori that Beau remembered had been – if not kind, then at least nice – had smiled easily, and always been willing to listen to Beau bitch about the latest bullshit thing her parents had done. They had even made semi-corporeal plans to get out of Kamordah together, to pull enough jobs to escape the stupid, thankless town.

 

‘My Dad made a deal with the guards,’ Beau told her, desperately, as if that would do a single fucking thing to assuage Tori’s anger.

 

‘And that’s supposed to be _better_? Stupid fucking rich girl needs Daddy to pull her ass out of the fire.’

 

‘I—’ Beau started, but realized it didn’t matter how that sentence ended. _I didn’t ask him to do it_. ‘Is _that_ why you hired Leland to start stealing wine?’ she asked. ‘As some fucked up revenge against me?’

 

Tori laughed, and it wasn’t the laugh that Beau remembered. The laugh she remembered was rich, and warm. This was cold, and calculating. What the fuck had happened to her in prison? Well, that last word was probably a good indicator. Beau had been in enough prison cells to know that they weren’t nice places.

 

‘I don’t care for you nearly enough to exact revenge against you, Beauregard. That scheme we pulled back in the day was the most profitable thing I’d ever done. Stealing your wine – well, that’s pretty good money, too.’

 

‘Oh.’ Beau said. She couldn’t tell whether or not Tori was telling the truth about not caring about her. Tori had always been a spectacular liar. Surely if she didn’t care, though, Beau wouldn’t be dripping blood from her nose right now. She didn’t know the person in front of her. Didn’t know the first person she’d ever loved. ‘What—what happened to you?’

 

Tori grinned. This, too, was a different kind of smile. Something wild and dark, but with a glimmer of the old energy. As if whatever had once been Tori had been taken and corrupted until it was almost unrecognizable.

 

Beau could tell that the other woman was torn between wanting to rub whatever had happened in Beau’s face, but also not wanting to show too much of her hand.

 

‘The prisons in Deastock,’ she said, finally. ‘They’re not very nice places. You learn what you have to learn to survive. You’d know that if you’d ended up there, like you were supposed to.’

 

‘I said—’ Beau started, but Tori apparently wasn’t hearing any of it. She said a single word under hear breath that Beau couldn’t quite hear, and a deafening crack of thunder rent the air. Unable to put her hands over her ears, Beau’s head started to pound with agony. For a few moments, she couldn’t hear anything.

 

‘—then,’ Tori continued, as though Beau hadn’t missed her last few words. ‘I heard – through that wonderful prison grapevine – that you were stealing wine from your old man. What better way to get you back to me.’

 

‘You threw me under the bridge?’ Beau asked, in a strangled sort of voice. After all this time, after that countless sessions of daydreaming, where she considered what a reunion with Tori might be like, she had never even considered it as a possibility. That she had been sent away to the Cobalt Soul because _Tori_ had found out.

 

_How could she have been so fucking stupid_ ?

 

‘I only did that to find you,’ Beau said, though every time she spoke, she could feel her words having so little impact, and every time, she believed them a little less herself. Because, of course, by the time she’d gotten caught, she probably had enough ten times over to bribe the guards to figure out where Tori had been taken. She’d just gotten cocky. ‘I never stopped looking.’ That was _definitely_ a lie, and Tori saw right through it.

 

‘And yet here I find you, back to Kamordah, working for The Gentleman, not even _trying_ to find me...’

 

‘The Gentleman?’ Beau said, blankly. ‘I don’t work for the fucking—’ Then, she considered all the jobs they had done, the fact that her blood was sitting in a vial somewhere in Zadash. Okay, maybe she did sort of work for the Gentleman a little bit. ‘I’m not here because of the Gentleman,’ she said, shifting her tack. ‘I helped pull a couple of bullshit jobs for him months ago, but that’s it. I’m here because someone _murdered_ my fucking parents.’

 

Tori had a brief flash of confusion at those words, and a strange, somehow horrible thought struck Beau. Tori didn’t know anything about how Beau’s parents had died. Which meant that either it truly had just been bad luck on their part, or…

 

Or maybe Tori was getting a little bit played, too.

 

So, in spite of her situation, Beau decided that the best thing for her to do was to keep digging. After all, she was probably going to die anyway. She at least wanted to die with all the answers.

 

‘At first I thought it was the same person that was stealing from the winery, but whoever was doing that fucked it up.’

 

There was a confused sort of look on Tori’s face. The veneer of bravado that she had been putting on was cracking. Underneath it all, maybe she was the same person, but Beau doubted it.

 

‘Don’t worry, I don’t mean you,’ she sneered, but it was a half-hearted, resigned sort of sneer. ‘Your buddy Leland fucked it up,’ she said. ‘First rule I ever learned was don’t steal so much it affects the business. And guess what. He stole too fucking much; the business is going under.’

 

Tori paused. ‘That’s a lie,’ she said.

 

‘Why the fuck do you think _he_ had to hire someone to kill my parents?’ Beau asked. ‘They fucking figured it out. As much as I fucking hated them, they’re not idiots. Ask the shithead how much of the difference he’s been pocketing by going to alternative buyers.’

 

Tori didn’t say anything. She left the room, and came back ten minutes later with Leland in tow. Beau could see her fingering the dagger on her belt, and had a strangely horrible feeling about how this was about to go down. ‘Leland, how much of the Lionett wine have you been stealing?’ Tori said. Leland looked up sharply, a hint of horror hiding behind his stoic expression. That seemed to be all the confirmation that Tori needed. Before Leland could even state his case, she had taken the dagger from her belt, and stabbed him in the neck. Beau winced, as blood started pouring from the wound. Leland clutched at it, but to no avail. He dropped to the ground, and kept clawing at his neck, struggling to breath, to hold on, until he didn’t struggle any more.

 

Beau stared at his lifeless eyes.

 

In all the jobs Tori and Beau had pulled together, they’d never killed anyone. From the look on Tori’s face, this clearly wasn’t the first time she’d shoved a dagger into someone’s neck. Beau didn’t know how to feel about that. After all, it wasn’t as though her hands were clean.

 

Still, she watched Tori carefully as the other woman cleaned the knife, and put it back on her belt next to the rapier. Tori grinned at her, and Beau felt a sudden rush of nausea. It was that same old grin she used to give when they’d picked a lock, or stolen a case of mead.

 

‘He was more useful to me than you are,’ Tori said, dropping the grin. The implication was clear; you’re next. But that didn’t explain why, if Beau wasn’t useful, she was sitting here, tied to a chair, listening to Tori gloat.

 

In fact, why had Tori even bothered taking her in the first place? It would have been easier to have just killed her in the winery, rather than drag her to a cave that might have been miles away. Which begged the question – exactly how had they gotten there without anyone else seeing?

 

Beau sighed internally.  _Fucking magic._

 

Then, a different thought struck her.

 

‘If you don’t care,’ she said, ‘Then why did you tell your guys not to kill me when they tried kidnapping my brother?’

 

For the first time, Beau saw doubt in Tori’s eyes. Saw the same almost twinkle that she had seen that first night in the  _Cliff’s Keep_ all those years ago. They had both changed so much. The Beau from back then could scarcely imagine having so many people that cared about her, that would be looking for her if something went wrong. The Beau from back then was angry, and scared, and maybe a little bit naive. The doubt turned to sadness, and Beau wondered if she had fully cracked that veneer.

 

‘Oh, Beau.’ Tori closed the distance between them, ran a finger down the side of Beau’s cheek. She couldn’t help but shiver. A gesture that had once thrilled her, now made her sick. ‘We could have been great together.’

 

‘We _were_ great together,’ Beau murmured. She wondered if Tori had really even loved her. The happiest times she’d ever had, growing up, had been with Tori. Admittedly, they had all involved things of a somewhat nefarious nature. Stealing, and lying, and blackmailing. But Tori had cared for her, had noticed her, in a way her parents never had.

 

After she’d been dragged home from the suude escapade(s), she’d been a little bit pissed. Not nearly as pissed as her father, who had beaten the shit out of her, and thrown her in the cellar.

 

A dozen times or more, she’d tried to get in contact with Tori, to find out what happened to Tori. It took a long while for her to figure out that when her father had paid off the guards, it had been for more than just keeping her out of trouble.

 

So she’d concocted her big wine scheme.

 

Surprisingly easy, given the connections that she already had, and the fact that Kamordah was basically wine country. There were more than a few shady looking Halflings ready to move as many barrels as she could give them, under the table. Bit by bit, she built up a nice pile of gold coins, hidden underneath a loose floorboard in her bedroom. One day, when she had enough of them, she’d bail Tori out, and leave Kamordah for good.

 

Not that it mattered. Not now, anyway. If circumstances were different…

 

No, she decided. If circumstances were different, Beau was still a very different person to the one she had been six years ago. She had friends, she had Yasha.

 

Yasha, who was probably out of her mind with worry. Or who maybe didn’t even know that Beau was missing yet, seeing as how Beau had so intelligently gone down to the winery without telling anyone else. In all fairness, she hadn’t expected to get whacked over the head with a magical whammy, and dragged to a cave to be…To be what, she wasn’t exactly sure. To be talked at? There didn’t seem to be any torture happening. Beau got the impression that Tori didn’t quite know  _what_ to do with her.

 

Beau decided to use that to her advantage. All she needed to do was distract Tori while she worked on the manacles.

 

‘I loved you,’ Beau said, careful to make sure Tori could hear that final ‘d’ sound. ‘Would’ve done anything to get you out of there.’ And she’d been dragged off to the Cobalt Soul before she’d gotten the chance. ‘Did you—’ The words caught in her throat. _Did you love me_? she wanted to say. It scarcely mattered anymore; whoever the Tori in front of her now was, it wasn’t the same Tori. All Beau really wanted to know that at one point, somewhere along the line, someone had loved her.

 

Then, she realized that she didn’t need to know. The mistakes she had made that had led to this point, they were all in the past. What mattered was that she had people that loved her now.

 

‘They took me away,’ she continued, making sure she looked as defeated as possible. ‘Made me leave everything behind. I had nothing when they dragged me into the monastery, blindfolded. Bruised, from where they’d beaten me into submission.’ Beau took a breath. She was embellishing, a little bit. Okay, more than a little bit. She hadn’t been blindfolded, and the beating wasn’t as bad as she’d made it out to be, but the rest was more or less true. ‘I came out of there a different person. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to leave every place better than I found it.’

 

‘Well, you should’ve started a little earlier,’ Tori said, with a slight laugh. 

 

Beau ignored her.  ‘Here’s the thing, though’ she said. ‘You want to go after me for what I did, and that’s fine. But you went after an innocent kid who wasn’t even born when you went to prison. And that, I can’t forgive you for.’

 

Tori sneered, but there was some pause to it.

 

‘Who cares whether you can forgive me? What about whether or not I’m gonna forgive you?’

 

‘I remember everything you ever taught me,’ Beau said. She threw the manacles to the side, and stood from the chair. ‘Including how to pick a godsdamned lock.’ Tori went immediately for her sword, but Beau was faster. She didn’t have her staff. She didn’t have magic, or a sword. All she had was her fists.

 

Jab, cross, straight into Tori’s face, and then an uppercut for good measure. She stepped backwards even as Tori was pulling the sword from its sheath. She didn’t use it, though. Instead, she pulled something from a component pouch, and started muttering under her breath.

 

Beau felt the familiar sensation of arcane energy enveloping her, and her mind tried to resist whatever spell it was that Tori had cast, but to no avail. She fell to her knees, gasping with laughter.

 

Before she could pull herself together, Tori had thrust forward with the rapier, and Beau only just managed to get out of the way in time. Even still, she got a slice across her shoulder for her troubles, but it was better than a blade in the gut.

 

 

It took about ten seconds for Beau’s head to clear, during which time she dodged two more attacks from Tori, but didn’t quite dodge another  _Thunderwave_ . The sound burst her eardrums, and she could feel something wet dripping down her ears.

 

Fuming, Beau swept her leg, trying to knock Tori to the ground. It didn’t quite work, but Beau did manage to knock the dagger from Tori’s belt, and it clattered across the floor. Her next strike – a teep to the chest – pushed Tori back into the wall, leaving her no way to dodge Beau’s next two punches.

 

Like a cornered animal, Tori struck back in a rage. Metaphorically speaking, at least. She pulled another component from her pouch, and muttered another word. Beau froze. She tried to move her arms, to punch, to kick, but...nothing. She was paralyzed. 

 

She dropped to the ground.

 

A third crack of thunder rent the air, and Beau just barely managed to break out of the hold to block her ears. As she did, she saw Tori bearing down on her with the rapier.

 

She could not block the  sword with her fists,  and there was nowhere to roll , so she reached out for the nearest thing she could find, which happened to be the dagger that Tori had dropped. Blade struck blade, and Tori pushed, trying to force both blades down to Beau’s neck. For her part, Beau was pushing just as hard back. If they weren’t oriented so awkwardly, she would have tried using her feet to attack instead.

 

Tori hesitated. Beau didn’t. Heart hammering,  with one burst of extraordinary strength,  she thrust the  dagger upwards through Tori’s chest. There was a brief moment of deafening silence, and Tori slumped onto Beau, blood spilling from the wound, as though floodgates had been opened.

 

It took Beau a few seconds to push Tori away, and though there was no active resistance, the body was limp, and heavy. Beau barely managed to push it onto her lap, as she pulled herself out from underneath, and it took another second or so for her to look down, and realize (though she had known from the first burst of blood from the wound) that Tori was dead.

 

There was so much blood.

 

Her hands dripped with  it, her body was soaked in it . Blood that she would never be able to wash off. Even is she did have the small amount of magic required to cast  _Cure Wounds_ , or  _Healing Word_ , she wasn’t sure she would have.  Even then, it was probably too late.

 

Whatever had happened to Tori after Beau left her behind had twisted her into a different person. A person filled with anger, and hatred, and violence. Whatever had caused that, Beau couldn’t help but feel responsible.

 

Couldn’t help but mourn that bright-eyed, cheeky grinned girl that had given her so much all those years ago. Those bright-eyes were closed now, and they would never grace the world with their presence again.  Somehow, her face had avoided all of the blood. Beau brushed the hair out of Tori’s eyes, leaving the slightest smear of it.

 

In death,  she could have been sleeping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Tori's statblock:
> 
> Level 13, 3rd level Rogue Swashbuckler/10th level Bard of Swords. When she met Beau, she was a 3rd level rogue.  
> Str- 9  
> Dex- 19  
> Con- 11  
> Int- 15  
> Wis- 12  
> Cha- 19
> 
> Spells Cast:  
> -Geas, to get Beau unconscious at the end of last chapter  
> -Invisibility at 4th level to get her, Beau and Leland away from the winery. Leland carried Beau I guess.  
> -Thunderwave, three times. First time at first level, second time at fourth level, third time at second level. Beau failed her con saves on all but the last of these (and a lot of her saves in general, because Tori has a reasonably high spell DC), but I rolled pretty low on damage.  
> -Hideous Laughter  
> -Hold Person
> 
> I didn't roll everything, but I rolled a few things. I knew how the battle was going to end, I just needed the middle bits.
> 
> This will have probably three or four more chapters. Then I have to figure out which story I want to finish writing next. If you have anything you want to see, lemme know.


	15. Chapter Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more mentions of blood and violence.

Chapter Fifteen

 

Beau had been gone for most of the afternoon, and the rest of the group were starting to panic a little.

 

‘She’s not responding to any of my messages, you guys,’ Jester said, her voice an octave or so above standard. She had tried, Caleb knew, three or four times, after they had returned from the wineyards and found that Beau was nowhere to be seen.

 

Fjord went to speak to the butler, Carlson, who told him that Beau had never returned from the winery.

 

‘Well, the halfling workers didn’t see her either,’ Nott said. In an undertone, she added. ‘Though they do take pretty long lunches. Not a lot of love lost towards the Lionett family, if you know what I mean.’

 

‘I guess I could try _Scrying_ again,’ Jester said. ‘Or maybe _Locate Object_ on her pants.’

 

‘Maybe try _Locate Object_ first,’ Caleb suggested. ‘Then, if it works, you haven’t wasted a big spell.’

 

Jester nodded; if Beau was in danger, then they would need all the spells they had.

 

She closed her eyes, and hummed a little tune under her breath. Her eyes snapped open. ‘She’s within a thousand feet,’ Jester announced, voice somewhere between ecstatic and relief. ‘Let’s go!’ Before any of them had even fully processed her words, Jester had taken off at a run, leaving the rest of the group to follow after her.

 

They ran for five minutes or so, finally reaching one of the cave’s on the outskirts of Kamordah. Caleb readied a _Fireball_ in his hand, unsure of what they would find.

 

The first thing he saw was the body of a man, bleeding from what looked like a knife wound to the neck.

 

 _Scheisse_.

 

The second thing he saw was two figures at the side of the cave.

 

Beau was slumped against the wall of the cave, her eyes unmoving as she stared at nothing, almost catatonic. She wasn’t unconscious though; her right hand brushed against the hair of the dead woman in her lap, in a repetitive, calming sort of motion. Her whole body seemed to be covered in blood.

 

‘Beau?’ Jester said, uncertainly, stepping forward. Beau did not respond.

 

Beside Caleb, Yasha was tighter than a bowstring. She held back, though, clearly afraid that she might make whatever was wrong, worse.

 

Caleb pushed her forward. ‘Go,’ he urged. Yasha hesitated, but Caleb knew that she was the only one of them that had a real chance at pulling Beau out of whatever stupor she was in. 

 

Though she had never made a particularly big deal about it, he had seen Beau dissociate before; withdrawing from the group in the same way he sometimes did, refusing to emotionally deal with the things that had happened. He wondered if that was how she’d managed to survive the years of abuse that her parents had subjected her to.

 

‘Beau,’ Yasha said, softly, and Beau’s head jerked up slightly. She didn’t stop moving her hand, even though it was now soaked in the dead woman’s blood. A sudden realization seemed to hit Yasha. ‘Is this Tori?’

 

Beau nodded, and Caleb saw that she had started to cry. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her cry before. Not even after Mollymauk had died. He did not know who Tori was, but clearly she had been important to Beau.

 

‘I killed her,’ Beau whispered.

 

‘It’s okay,’ Yasha said. She put her hand to Beau’s cheek, and Beau recoiled, suddenly. Caleb felt as though they were intruding on a moment of intimacy. ‘You can let go of her.’ But Beau only pulled the body closer.

 

Yasha did not respond with words. Instead, she made to pull the body from Beau’s lap. Beau resisted a little, but Yasha’s strength was that much greater, that she might as well have done nothing.

 

The body moved, Caleb could see that all of Beau’s clothes were soaked in blood. She had evidently been sitting there, unmoving, for some time before they had showed up. Beau did not move, and continued to stare beyond her party, at something that wasn’t there.

 

Beau herself seemed to be barely wounded, in comparison; there was a long gash across one of her legs, and another across her collarbone. She was bleeding from the ears. She did not appear to be paying much attention, least of all to the wounds. The loss of the body, though, seemed to have awakened her slightly from the stupor. Her gaze had not shifted, but her hands had turned to clenched fists, and her breath quickened.

 

‘Beau, I’m going to step forward, okay.’ Caduceus had already moved before Beau nodded. It was a barely perceptible tilt of the head. The firbolg knelt down beside Beau, and gently put his hand to her arm. His magic pulsed through her, and the wounds began knitting themselves back together.

 

There was not much to be done about the blood; Caduceus took a damp cloth from somewhere on his person, and wiped her face clean, but left the rest of it. ‘Thanks,’ Beau murmured, but her voice seemed to be a hundred miles way.

 

‘Beau, I’m going to help you stand, okay?’ Yasha said.

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau said, and her eyes darted back to lock with Yasha’s. They were filled with pain and sadness. The word was so soft – the softest by far that Caleb had ever heard her speak – but that fact that she was speaking at all was comforting. She made to grab Yasha’s arm, and then stopped, and looked over towards Caduceus. ‘Um...’ she said, biting her lip. She looked doubtful.

 

‘You want me to...’ Caduceus waved his hands. Beau nodded.

 

‘How about we take her outside?’ Yasha said, gently, and Beau nodded again. She let Yasha pull her to her feet. ‘Fjord, can you—’

 

‘Sure,’ Fjord nodded, and he picked up the body of the woman; Tori. She did not seem to much older than Beau, with dark hair and dark eyes. Caleb wondered who she had been; a friend? A lover?

 

‘What about this other guy?’ Jester said, pointing down at the body of who Caleb realized was Leland, the man who had been running the winery. ‘Should we bring him too?’ Beau didn’t say anything, but Fjord gave Jester a nod, and she hoisted the man’s body up into her arms.

 

In silence, they left the cave, Beau and Yasha trailing a little bit behind. Beau was walking on her own (eyes downcast, focusing on one foot in front of the other), but Yasha held a hand at her back just the same.

 

Once they had reached a ways away from the cave, Caleb cast  _Cat’s Ire_ , and had it dig a deep, narrow hole. A rush of gratitude washed over Beau’s face. Fjord laid the first body in the hole, and Jester the second. Beau made a brief movement, as if she was going to say something, but she didn’t. Caleb waved his hand one more time, and the cat’s paw filled the hole.

 

Then, Caduceus knelt down and touched the ground. After a minute or so, he seemed satisfied, and pulled his tall, lumbering frame up.

 

‘Thanks for uh...thanks for finding me,’ Beau said. She was still staring at the ground. ‘I think I lost my head a little in there.’ Her voice was distant, and she still didn’t seem quite there, altogether, but the fact that she was speaking in full sentences was a good thing, Caleb decided. He knew how he got when his mind went to other places.

 

At least one good thing had come of the afternoon; if this meant what Caleb thought it did, then they would finally be able to leave Kamordah.

 

…

 

When they reached the house, Yasha did not even hesitate before leading Beau upstairs to the bathroom, where she drew two baths. 

 

 

Yasha helped Beau take off her clothes. The fact that Beau was capable of even that, was comforting. Yasha had been very worried when she’d first seen that distant look in Beau’s eyes. She knew that look, was sure she’d given that look a hundred times or more.

 

‘Can I—’ Beau’s dark cheeks colored. ‘Can you, I mean...help me?’ The last words she said so softly that Yasha barely heard them at all. 

 

‘I am helping you,’ Yasha said, confused.

 

‘I mean...’ Beau gestured towards the bath. _Oh_ , Yasha realized.

 

‘Of course,’ she said. Carefully, she took off her clothes, and laid them carefully on the chair. In this weather, they would take days to dry, if she wore them in the tub.

 

 

 

Gently, she pulled Beau into the steaming bath. Quickly, the water turned a reddish-pink color. Some of the blood had dried against the skin, and Yasha set to work scrubbing it off.

 

‘I think I hit an artery,’ Beau said, suddenly. It was the clearest sentence she’d spoken since they’d found her in the cave. She was staring down at the water, watching what remained of Tori’s blood swirl around.

 

Yasha didn’t say anything. Beau had the tone of someone that wanted to keep talking, but didn’t quite know what to say.

 

‘I’ve never stabbed anyone before,’ she said, finally. ‘I didn’t realize there would be so much blood.’

 

Yasha, for her part, had stabbed hundreds of people, and most of those had probably ended up dead. She couldn’t remember the first one, which she supposed was probably a bad thing. Being covered in blood was, for Yasha, just another part of being in battle. 

 

‘You’ve killed people before, though,’ Yasha said. It wasn’t a question.

 

‘Yeah, but...with my staff, with my fists…They don’t really bleed that much.’ Beau was examining her knuckles as she said this. They were bruised, Yasha assumed, from punching. ‘I just...I thought I maybe I could talk her down, but then, when push came to shove, I didn’t even try...’ She trailed off, and stared out the window. There were tears pressing at the corner of her eyes, and she choked back a sob. ‘I mean...even though I thought I would never see her again, I still loved...’ She paused, and looked back at Yasha, a little guiltily. ‘Loved the memory of her.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. I know that’s not really fair to you. But after all this time, even though I knew she’d probably hate me, I really hoped that she wouldn’t. Now, I guess I’ll never really know.’

 

Yasha took Beau’s hand in her own. ‘Our first loves never really leave us,’ she said, and though she knew she was finally ready to move on, she could not help but think of Zuala in that moment. In a strangely morbid way, she and Beau had a shared pain, now; feeling responsible for the death of someone they had loved.

 

They moved to the second bath, leaving the blood stained water behind.

 

‘I just...Nothing good has come from me being back here,’ Beau said, leaning her head back into Yasha’s shoulder. ‘Nothing good has _ever_ come from me being here.’ 

 

Yasha had the feeling that Beau was not just talking about Kamordah. Before she could contradict this thought, Beau had started speaking again. ‘I thought I might be able to get some kind of closure by coming back, but I’m going to spend my whole life just wondering.’

 

Yasha couldn’t tell whether Beau was referring to her parents, or to Tori. Probably both, she decided.

 

‘Some good has come by you being here,’ Yasha reminded Beau, gently massaging a hand across her shoulders. ‘You met your brother.’

 

Beau snorted. ‘I got his parents killed, almost got him kidnapped. He’d be better off without me.’

 

Yasha did not know what to say to that. But she knew that if Beau abandoned her brother, she would be far more miserable than if she didn’t. ‘Do you really think that either of you would be happy with that outcome?’ Yasha asked.

 

‘No,’ Beau admitted, but Yasha could tell that the thought was still preying on her. She was quiet for the rest of the bath, and remained quiet as they dried off, and as Yasha helped her into some clean clothes that Jester had found for her.

 

The sun had barely gone down, but Beau looked exhausted, and did not argue when Yasha led her back to the room she shared with Jester.

 

Beau slumped down onto the mattress, and looked up at the ceiling. Then, she looked at Yasha.‘Will you, uh...’ Beau looked a little embarrassed. ‘Will you stay with me until I fall asleep?’

 

‘Of course,’ Yasha said, and let Beau take her hand, and pull her down into the bed.

 


	16. Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Sixteen

 

Yasha woke just after dawn, and Beau was still fast asleep.  Since Beau needed all the sleep she could get, recently, Yasha very slowly, very carefully, got out of bed. She paused at the door, and watched the rise and fall of Beau’s chest in the morning light. After several minutes, Yasha managed to pull herself away, and went downstairs.

 

She didn’t particularly want to leave Beau, but she wanted to make sure that there would be something to eat when Beau did wake up. She had forgotten, of course, that they were in a house where food was made on the slightest whim. 

 

The rest of the party were sitting around the table in the parlor, eating breakfast.  Or rather, breakfast was in front of them, and they were talking in low whispers.

 

‘How’s she doing?’ Fjord asked, the moment Yasha set foot in the room.

 

‘She is a little better,’ Yasha said. To explain exactly what Beau was going through took more words than she had the strength for.

 

‘Do you know who that woman was to Beauregard?’ Caleb asked. Yasha nodded.

 

‘She told me…some time ago.’ She looked over at the group, apologetically. ‘It is not my story to tell. But...she is very upset, and I think she will be for some time.’

 

‘All the more reason we need to leave this place as soon as possible,’ Fjord said. Yasha realized what they must have been discussing.

 

‘Will the Crownsguard not be looking for the man...Leland?’

 

Fjord nodded around to the rest of the group. ‘That’s what we’ve been talking about,’ he said. Then, suddenly, he looked a little uncomfortable. Caleb interceded on his behalf.

 

‘It is not so unusual for a man stealing from his business to go missing without a trace,’ Caleb said. ‘After all, he would not want to be caught.’

 

Yasha could see now, why Fjord was uncomfortable. Covering up a murder was a dark path to start on. But if it was a choice between Beau’s happiness and her own already darkened soul, Yasha knew which she would choose in a heartbeat.

 

‘What about the woman?’ Nott asked. ‘Tori?’

 

Yasha was the only one that knew anything about Tori, but even then, she didn’t know much. From all the conversations she’d had with Beau, she couldn’t remember any mention of a family, or someone that would miss her.

 

‘I get the impression she was keeping her presence here on the, ah...down low,’ Caleb said, saving Yasha from saying any of this. ‘So I don’t think that there will be too many questions.’

 

 _Good_ , Yasha thought.

 

The last thing they needed was another reason to stay.

 

…

 

Beau was pulled suddenly from sleep by the emptiness of the bed beside her. It was such a weird thing; she had gone so long without sharing a bed, and yet, it had only taken two times of doing it with Yasha for it to feel like the most natural thing in the world.

 

She stayed in bed for a long time, staring up at the ceiling, knowing that sooner or later, she would have to go downstairs, and face her friends.

 

Somehow, she wasn’t worried that they would think she had done the wrong thing, and _that_ was what worried her. _Somehow_ , they seemed to support her without ever really wanting anything in return. Was that what it was supposed to feel like? To have a family that cared about you?

 

Around lunchtime, Beau finally got out of bed. She would have to face the music eventually, and when she did, maybe then she could finally leave this godsforsaken place.

 

The first person she saw upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, was Frederick. ‘Beau!’ he cried out, and ran over to hug her around the knees. Beau knelt down to give him a full, proper hug.

 

‘Hey, buddy,’ she said.

 

‘You keep going away,’ he said, and there was a sadness to his voice that Beau didn’t like. She wondered just how often her parents had left him here alone. ‘I don’t like it when you leave.’

 

‘It’s okay,’ she told him. ‘Next time I leave, you’re coming with me.’

 

His eyes widened in joy at that comment, and Beau sent him off to play for a bit; the conversation she was about to have, it probably wouldn’t do to have him listening in.

 

The Mighty Nein were having lunch in the dining room. She was glad they were taking advantage of the facilities in a way that she still didn’t feel like she really could.

 

From the look on their faces, they were surprised to see her up. Beau didn’t find _that_ fact very surprising at all. She’d been kind of a mess last night. Her head was still a little all over the place, but she was cognizant enough to know that she was fucked up, at least.

 

‘Hey guys,’ she said, rubbing the back of her head, which she always seemed to do when she was nervous. ‘Uh...sorry about yesterday. I may have...lost control of things a little.’

 

‘How’re you feeling?’ Fjord asked, just as Jester asked, ‘Who was she?’ Fjord gave Jester a look.

 

‘I’m fine,’ Beau said. She made to rebuff Jester’s question, but found that the thought of talking about it wasn’t as painful as she’d anticipated. ‘Her name was Tori; she was my...girlfriend, I guess. About six or seven years ago. We stole a lot of shit together.’ A pause. Beau knew that the sadness that hadn’t quite reached her voice was still in her eyes.

 

‘She tried to kill you,’ Fjord said. ‘You did what you had to do.’

 

Beau’s expression didn’t change.  Logically she knew that if she hadn’t killed Tori, then she probably would have ended up dead herself. That didn’t change the fact that she still felt kind of shitty about it.

 

‘She tried to take your brother,’ Caleb said, and that seemed to light something. Okay. Now she felt a little less shitty.

 

‘I know,’ Beau said, finally. ‘I just…my feelings are a little complicated about this is all. More complicated than my feelings about...’ A pause. ‘ _Them_.’

 

It would take a while to sort through it all. She hadn’t gotten the answers that she’d wanted from coming to Kamordah, but at least she would never have to return again.

 

The only question that remained was “where to next?”

 

Actually, there were a few questions other than that one, but Beau decided that she would delegate those to the people with much more experience in matters. The house would sell easily, she thought, but the winery was another matter altogether.

 

The halfling workers were keeping it running, and Beau had begrudgingly started doing the books in Leland’s absence.

 

The next few days, Beau helped her brother pack his things together. He didn’t have a lot, but it was enough that they bought another cart to load it into. Frederick was, of course, a little bit sad to leave Kamordah, but excited to be doing something adventurous. Beau didn’t think he was really old enough to have grown too attached to the place.

 

She had also asked Frederick’s nanny, Amelia, if she’d be interested in staying on. She had, no doubt thinking of everything that had happened over the past three weeks, turned Beau down on the spot.

 

‘I mean, between the seven of us, we can keep an eye on him, right?’ Fjord said, and behind him, Nott gave a horrified sort of look, as though she wouldn’t trust Fjord to raise a barn, let lone raise a child.

 

Still, between them they probably had about two and a half responsible adults, each of them having various fractions. Beau put herself at three-fifths, on a good day. Six months ago, it had been two-fifths, so that was progress.

 

Adult enough, at least, that she just about managed to grit her teeth and set foot back inside the winery to get the ledgers. When she looked at them, things seemed slightly less terrible than she’d initially thought. It wasn’t bleeding money, in any case. A few months without someone stealing wine from it, and it’d probably start turning a profit again.

 

‘You sticking around, then?’ said a voice from behind Beau. She started slightly. Maris was too godsdamned quiet for her own good.

 

‘Fuck no,’ Beau said. ‘I’m leaving as soon as I possibly fucking can. Let the lawyers run the business for a while.’

 

‘Well, I’m sure he’ll be a better boss than your asshole father ever was,’ Maris said.

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau laughed. An idea had hit her, all of a sudden, and now that it had, she couldn’t get it out of her head. ‘Hey Maris. You wanna buy a fixer-upper winery?’

 

Maris laughed, clearly thinking that Beau was joking. ‘Maybe one day, when I’m rich. We’ll see.’

 

‘You haven’t heard my asking price,’ Beau said. Maris stared at her.

 

‘You’re serious, aren’t you. Hah! Well, whatever your asking price is, I’m sure I can’t afford it.’

 

‘Two silver,’ Beau said. ‘Of course, I’ll have to get the lawyer to subdivide the property, so you’ll be your own thing.’

 

‘You’re mad,’ Maris said, in disbelief. ‘Run properly, do you know how much this place brings in?’

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau mused. ‘It’s a real pity it hasn’t been run properly, then.’

 

‘I don’t know anything about running a winery.’

 

‘So I’ll talk to Devos,’ Beau said. ‘He’d’ve been the one overseeing it anyway. Or at least whatever Trustees he has that do that sort of thing. I’ll pay his salary until it starts turning a profit, and then you can go from there.’ The least she could do was repay some people that knew a little bit of what it was like to be under her father’s thumb.

 

‘It’ll go out of business in a year,’ Maris said. Beau shrugged.

 

‘If it goes down, it goes down. But if you want to try and get it back up again...’ She trailed off. ‘Anyway, think about it.’

 

Beau sat at her father’s old desk for a while, twirling the quill in her fingers. Then, she slammed the ledger shut, and left the winery, knowing that she would never have to set foot in it ever again.

 

...

 

Beau left Devos with a list of instructions  and a stack of gold , and the house staff with their next  two months’ salary. With no-one staying in it, it wasn’t as though they’d need to feed anyone, or clean much of anything, but Beau wanted to make sure that if any potential buyers came through the area, then it was in perfect shape.

 

‘When we sign the paperwork,’ she told the lawyer, ‘We’re not fucking doing it in Kamordah.’

 

It was early on a Grissen morning that they left the town, and Beau felt an enormous weight lift from her chest as they did.

 

‘Where are we going?’ Frederick asked. He was dressed for the cold weather, a tiny coat buttoned to his neck, and a woolen hat on his head. Most of his things were loaded into the cart, but he carried a backpack with him, which Beau knew for a fact held nothing but books.

 

It was a pretty damn good question.

 

‘Have you ever been to Zadash?’ Beau asked, already knowing the answer. Frederick shook his head.

 

They  had planned to spend two weeks in Zadash, but somehow it turned into two months. Dur ing  that time, Beau took Frederick to the Cobalt Soul library, giving the evil eye to anyone that questioned her. He was a little bit too young to start punching things, but he was pretty damned good at finding the books he wanted, of which there were hundred. Holy shit, he and Caleb were going to get on so fucking well.  He practically vibrated with joy when  the wizard cast  _Dancing Lights_ one night in the inn.

 

As Frederick’s guardian, Beau had the right to request funds from the Trustee for his “upbringing and maintenance.” Beau had snorted at that prospect. She would never touch a single copper of it. It would be his to what he wanted with it, the moment he came of age.

 

Funnily, though, an enormous house in Kamordah fetched a pretty fucking big amount of gold on the open market. The nitty-gritty of it took a long time, but in the end, Beau found herself the recipient of more gold than she’d be able to spend in a lifetime.

 

It was absurd.

 

Given that they hadn’t exactly spoiled her, she’d never realized just how much they had. All she’d known about had been the winery incomings and outgoings. Not any of the other investments.

 

The thought of it made her a little angry, that they’d been so shitty, given what they had. They could have been decent parents, and still been absurdly rich.

 

The winery sold for two silver.

 

Unknown to the rest of the party, Beau had Devos funnel a portion of the house proceeds back to Maris. Just to get them started.

 

The rest, she had a plan for. Or rather, the vague glimmerings of a plan.

 

Per Jester’s request, after they finished up in Zadash, they started making their way south to Nicodranas.

 

Thanks to Frederick, and the cart, they were moving a little bit slower than they normally would, stopping every night to make camp in the bubble.

 

As long as they were on the open road, Beau did not sleep as well as she would have liked. It was dangerous enough for seasoned adventurers, let alone a four-year-old boy.

 

Her mood lifted considerably when they finally made it to Nicodranas.

 

At the _Lavish Chateau_ , they reunited with Yeza and Luc, Nott excusing herself from the group to go spend time with her actual family. Caleb looked a little bit uncomfortable. Beau pulled him away, so he didn’t have to suffer through being a third (fourth?) wheel.

 

‘Caleb, show Frederick how Frumpkin can turn into an owl,’ Beau told him. Frederick was hanging by her leg, a little tired, but excited to be seeing more magic tricks.

 

Caleb, eager to distract himself, seemed to readily acquiesce.

 

They spent a week in Nicodranas doing absolutely nothing. No businesses to run, no wars to get involved in, no monsters to kill. Those things were, more than likely happening in other parts of the world, and would probably come back to Nicodranas at one point, but for now, they were free.

 

On the seventh day, after breakfast, Beau found Caleb sitting a long way down the table from the rest of the group, going over his spellbook.

 

‘Caleb, come with me.’ Beau didn’t even wait for an answer before grabbing the wizard by the arm.

 

‘Where are we going?’ he asked, after they had left the _Chateau_. To his credit, he didn’t make any attempt to pull from her grip and go back inside.

 

‘We’re gonna go buy a house,’ Beau said.

 

…

 

It wasn’t quite as easy as Beau thought it would be.

 

There were no houses hanging around with enormous “For Sale” signs on them, like she had hoped. After asking what felt like a hundred different people, Beau was directed towards the Marquis Demesne.

 

‘You think they’re just going to let us walk into town, and buy a house?’ Caleb whispered, under his breath.

 

‘I think you’re forgetting something, Caleb,’ Beau told him.

 

‘What?’

 

‘These people – people _like_ this – really like money. And guess what I’ve just gotten a shitton of?’

 

Even then, it took all of her charisma (which wasn’t much) and a great deal of Caleb’s (which was a bit more) to convince the Marquis that they weren’t there to swindle people.

 

‘Do you really think this is a good idea?’ Caleb asked, almost two hours later, when they left the building.

 

Beau snorted. ‘Fuck no.’ But, she was doing it anyway, because it was the only way that she could really think of to thank them all for what they’d done for her.

 

And maybe – just maybe – a little part of her thought that if she had a home like this, then maybe Yasha would stick around the next time lightning burst from the sky.

 

...

 

The house sat on a little cliff, overlooking Nicodranas proper. It was detached enough from the town that Jester could come and go as she pleased, without having to disguise self, though Beau still had enough coin left over that she could probably bribe the Zolezzo into looking the other way.

 

‘I’m sorry,’ Fjord said, clearly thinking that he had misheard Beau. ‘What did you say?’

 

‘I said, I bought a house.’ Beau gestured towards it. She wasn’t sure why this was so hard for them to get. Then, she vaguely wondered if this was another thing that normal people didn’t do. Buy a house for their friends to live in. Oh well. ‘I mean, it’s not as nice as the Xhorhaus,’ she continued. ‘But...here’s the...’

 

‘Nicodranhouse?’ Nott suggested.

 

‘Are we really reusing the same joke?’ Beau asked gruffly, knowing that the name had already stuck.

 

There was a split second of silence. ‘ I get the second-biggest bedroom!’ Jester said, before running off towards the house.

 

‘Why the second biggest?’ Beau asked, running after Jester at what was for her, a slow jog.

 

‘I just assumed that you and Yasha would be taking the biggest,’ Jester said, with a shrug. She stopped as they entered the foyer. It was painted in seaside colors, but Beau knew that Jester would probably end up re-painting the whole house anyway.

 

‘Holy shit, Beau, I can’t believe you bought us a house,’ Jester said. She was still marveling at the fact, but honestly, Beau didn’t see the big deal. It was for her benefit more than for theirs; if Luc and Yeza were staying here, then Frederick would have someone to play with, someone his own age to socialize with. Beau would be able to leave the house on her own every once in a while, without worrying who was looking after him. Jester would be able to visit her mother whenever she liked...It was a no-brainer, really.

 

Anything for family, after all.

 

It was a nice thought.

 

…

Yasha found Beau sitting on the edge of the cliff, watching the slow tide of the ocean.

 

‘Hi,’ she said, and Beau looked up, smiling. Already, she looked a thousand times happier, a million times freer, than she ever had in Kamordah.

 

‘Hey.’

 

‘Can I sit?’

 

‘Of course.’ Beau shifted over slightly to let Yasha sit down, resting her head against Yasha’s shoulder when she had. ‘It’s so nice here.’

 

‘It really is,’ Yasha agreed. This was the sort of view she never would have gotten in the Iothia Moorlands; bright green grass, and beautiful turquoise ocean. ‘And look – grass.’

 

Beau grinned. ‘So,’ she said. ‘I bought a house.’

 

‘You did,’ Yasha laughed. ‘It’s very nice.’

 

Beau cocked her head. ‘You like it? That’s good. I mean, I know you’re not the most...homely? Housey? Kind of person, so you know...I won’t get offended if you want to sleep outside every now and then.’ There was a pause. ‘Just, you know...don’t leave.’

 

Yasha pressed a kiss to Beau’s forehead. ‘Why would I ever want to leave?’ she said.


	17. Epilogue

Epilogue

 

Spring dawned in Nicodranas, and it was beautiful.

 

Yeza and Luc and Frederick were off picking strawberries at a tiny farm that the Mighty Nein had noticed on their last trip back through to Nicodranas, leaving Beau and Caduceus home alone at the Nicodranhouse (damnit, Nott).

 

The rest of the party were off tracking a wounded Behir across the Menagerie Coast. Exactly what a Behir was doing above ground, Beau didn’t know, and she tried not to let herself think about it. Her friends had been kind enough to trade off on staying behind every time they went off somewhere, and this time it was Caduceus’s turn.

 

‘Are you okay?’ he asked her. They were sitting on the roof of the house, drinking tea, as the sun set over the Swavain Islands. ‘You seem tense.’

 

‘Yeah,’ Beau said, eventually. ‘Just getting a bit antsy is all.’ She had never been a fan of staying in the one place too long, only now she had an obligation to.

 

‘You know, I’m sure next time, no-one would mind if you went along, and a couple of us stayed.’

 

Beau hesitated. She wanted that. She wanted that more than anything else in the world. But she couldn’t take the risk.

 

‘I mean,’ Caduceus continued, as though Beau hadn’t made any sort of expression. ‘Who can you trust if not your family?’ He was not talking about blood family.

 

‘I’ll think about it,’ Beau said, even though her mind was screaming at her to say _yes_.

 

There was a nice, comfortable silence between them. It was one of the things Beau quite liked about sitting with Caduceus, sometimes. He saw the niceness in just...not saying anything for a while.

 

In the end, it was Beau that broke that silence.

 

‘Hey,’ she said, deciding to voice a thought that had been hanging in the back of her head ever since they’d settled in Nicodranas. ‘Do you carry plant seeds around with you?’

 

‘Of course,’ Caduceus said, apparently not thinking it was a weird question at all. ‘I’ve got fruits, vegetables, flowers, grasses. All sorts. What are you interested in?’

 

Beau looked down at the wide grass expanses that surrounded the house. It seemed a pity not to have anything there. She thought of Yasha, of those blue-green and violet eyes, of the wildflower mural in the Xhorhaus. Thought of everything that Yasha had done for her over the last few months, and everything she would continue to do.

 

One day, they could have a nice, full garden (with no fucking grapes), and Luc and Frederick would swing from a tree branch into a lake, and Caduceus would tend to the soil, and...and it would be like they were all really a family.

 

But for now…

 

When the Mighty Nein returned to Nicodranas a week later, Beau was hot, sweaty, and streaked with dirt. She and Frederick had been planting seeds all morning, and the ones they had put in at the start of the week were starting to peek out from the dirt.

 

‘They’re back!’ yelled Frederick, while Beau was digging a hole with her hands. Playing with Luc had certainly brought out his loud side. Beau looked up and saw an exhausted-looking group walking towards the house, with Yasha at the front.

 

She was smiling.

 

‘What’s this?’ Yasha asked, when Beau had run out to meet them. Beau kissed her in response, ignoring the wolf-whistle from Jester and, to her surprise, Fjord.

 

Beau grinned. She put her hands to Yasha’s cheeks and pulled her in for a second, longer kiss.

 

‘Flowers,’ she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the end of my last story, I said "yeah, I'll write something else, it'll be nice and short" and anyway, this is now my third longest story.
> 
> Thanks for sticking around to the end, and tell me what you want to see next, I guess.


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